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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26494174">The Herbalist</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/disasterhawke/pseuds/disasterhawke'>disasterhawke</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alchemy, Canon-Typical Violence, Complicated Morality, Crossover, Daedra (Elder Scrolls), Daedra Worship (Elder Scrolls), Dalish Elven Culture and Customs, Dalish Elves, Dovahkiin | Dragonborn in Thedas (Dragon Age), Dubious Morality, Fantastic Racism, Female Friendship, Fictional Religion &amp; Theology, Friendship, Gen, Healing, Herbalism, Magic, Reluctant Dovahkiin | Dragonborn</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 12:01:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>39,667</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26494174</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/disasterhawke/pseuds/disasterhawke</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>She'd just wanted to finally find a Nirnroot plant. Instead, she'd found herself saved from an executioner's block by a dragon. The Dragonborn had never asked for anything that had been thrust upon her - and she definitely had never asked to be transported to a whole other world. A world where everything she has devoted herself to learning is of no use. A world torn apart by its own wars, its own magic.</p>
<p>It would be logical to jump back through the Gate that sent her here. Except that there's a woman who needs her help, her protection - a woman who has been chosen just like she was, all those months ago. And there's no way Wylaia is letting Thedas chew Ellana up like Skyrim did her.</p>
<p>[A Skyrim/Dragon Age crossover with a Dragonborn who has not completed her quest, and is not the Inquisitor. Tags will be added with each chapter.]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Female Lavellan &amp; Female Dragonborn, Female Lavellan &amp; Solas (Dragon Age)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>84</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>178</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Through the Oblivion Gate</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>When I've done multi-chapter stories previously, I've always written the bulk of it beforehand and then uploaded, or written very large chapters. I wanted to challenge myself to write a multi-chapter story that had regular updates - so here we are. Chapters will be uploaded once a week, midweek, barring 2020 getting in my way!</p>
<p>Thank you to all of the incredible authors of the Skyrim crossovers in the archive - reading how you've tackled things has given me so much to think about and so much inspiration. &lt;3</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Something was very wrong.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>No lore that had ever been written or sung about the Gates of Oblivion described them this way - vibrant green, tearing at the very air like licks of uncontrolled flame. She could feel its magic; a hum against her skin, the same vibration she always felt as a new Word cascaded towards her. But there were no voices chanting in her mind, her blood, her soul. There was no sense of belonging in this magic. There was only the realisation, as it pulled her in, that she should never have come here in the first place.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>One of her boots slipped on the ground. She hadn’t moved - the Gate, or whatever it was, was pulling her in. Turning, the Dragonborn tried to hurl herself forward. First, she used her legs; when that did not work, she tried to Shout; when even that failed, she pulled out her climbing hook and hurled it - but the hook did not take, and the rope flailed in her grip as she was pulled back, and back, and back, and through.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The vivid green gave way to clouds of sickly yellow-green mist that turned into jagged, floating rocks that she collided with in a horrible sounding crack. There was an intense wind rushing around her, but the mist seemed not to move with it, a sure sign of its unnatural nature. She blinked, twice, until the world came into focus - as much as it seemed it was going to. The Gate she had fallen through was but a speck against the distant, yellow-brown sky.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Something crackled to her left; like a spark spell held ready to be discharged. The Dragonborn leapt to her feet, pushing aside the screaming pain now rippling up her spine, and turned.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Before her knelt a small woman, one wrist clutched before her. The source of the sound was the hand she was gripping - a hand that bore the same tearing, crackling green light that the Gate had. It illuminated the woman’s softly featured face, her almost white hair that lay swept over one shoulder, and the tattoo that sprawled lines over her forehead like the swelling branches of a tree. But strangest of all were her ears - they were pointed. Elven, like the Dragonborn’s own. Only the woman had skin and hair too pale to be a Dunmer; eyes too colourful to be a Bosmer; a face too human to be an Altmer, or even a Falmer, though she had the colouring for that at least.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Was she one of the Ayleids? They had never been seen, but it stood to reason that they would bear some similarities to the other Elves. None of the books she’d ever read had mentioned their appearance. They certainly had not mentioned elves that could open Oblivion Gates.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Dragonborn stepped forward, and the woman’s head snapped up - skittish like a fox. Her eyes widened, and she opened her mouth as if to say something. All the clue that the Dragonborn got was the woman’s expression changing dramatically, her hands starting to move -</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mere seconds after the Dragonborn threw herself to the side, a spider of the likes that she hadn’t seen in months skittered past. No - a spider the likes of which she’d never seen. Its body was too low to the ground, its legs too small in comparison to its body. This was not a Frostbite spider at all, but something else entirely. Either way, there was only one thing to do - run.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Breaking into a sprint, the Dragonborn grabbed the strange maybe-elf by the wrist as she passed, yanking her alongside. To her surprise, the woman kept up easily - even outstripping her after a few moments. They both spared a glance over their shoulders and saw that more spiders were following - that in the distance, the shadow of other creatures were appearing. Neither of them had said anything - their breaths were dedicated to short, sharp attempts to get air into their lungs.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There was a sharp slope ahead of them. As they approached, the Dragonborn realised that she still had her climbing hook and rope held in her other hand. The woman began to climb, but the Dragonborn stopped at the cliff’s base, taking the moment to throw it onto the top. This time the hook took, and she began to climb as fast as she could, using the rope to let her all but walk up the side of the stone. When she came level with the woman she held out a hand, and the two of them began to climb together.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It seemed too easy to ascend, somehow - as if the forces of Nirn were wrong here in the Void, or whichever Plane of Oblivion they had fallen upon. They came close to the top easily, but so did the spiders behind them - the creatures began to get so close that their oddly short legs scratched at the backs of the two women as they ascended.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Then, a hand - glowing, somewhere between white and gold and yellow, held out over the edge. The Dragonborn planted a hand on the maybe elf’s back and pushed her up the rest of the way - the woman weighed far too little, and it was far too easy. With the help of the glowing hand she made it over the top, then turned to offer the Dragonborn help the rest of the way.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The glowing figure that had saved them reminded the Dragonborn of a fire atronach - but with none of the dark, ember-like core, just flickering light. A...light atronach? Or some being made by the Nine? She had no time to think on it further - there was another Gate in front of them, but one that flickered differently, as if there were land beyond it rather than simply the same green light.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Praying to any of the Nine who would listen, the Dragonborn took the strange woman’s outstretched hand and leapt through the Gate with her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This time, the sensation of falling was far shorter - they appeared, and the Dragonborn quickly saw ground beneath her. The woman at her side was screaming in agony, and was now falling badly, clasping her glowing hand in the other. She crashed down to the ground with a terrible crunching sound, as the Dragonborn landed in a chaotic but far safer roll beside her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Golden eyes darting about, the Dragonborn took in her surroundings. The Gate they had come through was like none she had ever seen - it was huge, and hovered high in the air, beneath what looked like a vortex of green clouds. They were in some kind of ruin, or structure, and figures were coming towards them - figures with swords, and armour...no, uniform, for almost all of them wore the same thing. A uniform that she did not recognise.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Pain lanced up her spine again, a reminder that she was in no condition to fight, even if she thought she could take on so many people - even if she was </span>
  <em>
    <span>willing</span>
  </em>
  <span> to kill so many people. So the Dragonborn turned and scrambled over to the body of the woman who had escaped the Void with her, brushing muddied hair out of her face and tilting her head down to listen for breath.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There was nothing. Not so much as a shiver in the air.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Potions and magic were effective at healing, but not if you weren’t breathing. Folding her hands together, the Dragonborn began to push down on the woman’s chest as hard as she could - pulsing like a heartbeat, and trying not to think about the sound of cracking ribs. Then she pinched the woman’s nose, tilted her head back and breathed as hard as she could into her mouth.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There were people around her now, she could tell, but they hadn’t stopped her. Someone had stepped towards her, someone in armour that bore a white eye, but another cloaked figure had placed a hand on their shoulder. But as the Dragonborn pushed the second breath into the odd elf’s body, that armoured figure stepped forward.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Who are you? What is it that you are doing to her?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was a woman’s voice, one with a strange accent that the Dragonborn could not place. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“She is not breathing,” the Dragonborn explained, returning to pushing hard on the woman’s chest. “I am helping her.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>With the next breath, the woman began coughing, spluttering into the Dragonborn’s face even as she pulled it away - never had she been so glad to be spat upon. Not even stopping to wipe her face, the Dragonborn slipped a hand under the woman’s shoulders, helping her to sit up and choke the last of Sovngarde’s touch away.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Is she awake?” asked another voice, also female, but softer and sharper all at once.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Dragonborn shook her head, taking the weight of the woman’s body against her. “No. But she is alive. I can heal her, but not here - the cold will weaken her body, and I don’t know what the Gate above us is doing to her, with the thing in her hand.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What thing?” the soft-spoken woman asked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Before there could be any answer, the armoured woman had stepped forward, sword raised. “You will do no such thing,” she said, and began barking orders at the soldiers around them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As her weapons were taken and her hands bound, the Dragonborn noticed that, at least, their captors were being careful with her still unconscious companion. By the Nine, if they would just let her get to the woman - her ribs were broken, she was certain, and if they’d hit anything, the woman was as dead as she would’ve been if she hadn’t started breathing again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>These thoughts were all that consumed the Dragonborn’s mind as the strange soldiers pulled her through the ruins of a place she did not know, down the side of a mountain she did not recognise, into a village full of unfamiliar faces.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Solas tells me that she would be dead if it were not for you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lifting her head, the Dragonborn looked through the bars of their cell. They had left her here with no further word for a time, then eventually brought the other woman in. She was lying on the bench that passed for a bed, her chest gently rising and falling as she slept. This Solas must be the one who had tended her; when she had been brought in, the Dragonborn had run to check on her, but there had been no need.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes,” the Dragonborn said, keeping her voice low. “That is very likely.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was the soft-spoken woman who knelt in front of the bars, her face half-hidden behind a hood. She had a beautiful, delicate face, the Dragonborn could see, and moved with the sort of grace you normally only saw in the khajit.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I have many questions,” the hooded woman said.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Dragonborn laughed; little more than a soft chuckle, but she stifled it at once anyway. It was probably not a good idea to laugh at your captors. She’d wanted to laugh in Helgen, at the absurdity of it all, at the very idea that she was about to die just because she’d wanted to see one Nirnroot in her life. Because she’d gone a little too far off the path. A little too close to the war.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well,” the Dragonborn said, smiling slightly, “it’s nice to have something in common.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I am Leliana.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Wylaia.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That is a beautiful name,” Leliana said, in what Wylaia thought was a genuine way. She had a gentle, lilting accent that was pleasant to listen to. “Where is it from?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Wylaia smiled a little more, and rubbed at her cheek. “You mean to ask where I am from, I think.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You do not look like any elf I have ever met, Dalish or otherwise.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“...oh dear.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leliana tilted her head. “Is something wrong?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ve been taken prisoner by what looks like an army, so yes, I would say that something is certainly wrong,” Wylaia mumbled, before realising her tongue was running away with her again. “Ah. I don’t know that word, you just used. Day-leash?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Dalish. It is the kind of elf that the woman across from you is.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh. Is that another word for Ayleid? They sound a little similar, I suppose. Her face is too soft for a Falmer. Aren’t the Ayleid supposed to speak Old Cyrodillic? Or a kind of it? I’ve not studied it much, but I - why are you looking at me like that?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Because,” Leliana said, sitting down properly, “I do not know any of those words you just used, either.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, good,” sighed Wylaia, resting back against the wall. “It’s happening again.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Have you ever been going through a perfectly normal day one moment, and then found that it takes only minutes for the entire world to turn upside down? For everything to change, and all of the peace and comfort you had to be ripped from under you?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was Leliana’s turn to laugh, softly. “Oh Maker, yes. I know that feeling very well.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I am from Skyrim,” Wylaia explained, hesitating not out of secrecy but a sense of impending doom. “One of the provinces of Tamriel, on Nirn, in Mundus - the mortal plane. Well - I am now, at least. I’m from Valenwood originally, and then I moved up through Cyrodiil for a while, but that isn’t the point.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The point,” Leliana said, “is that none of those are places I have ever heard of.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I...thought you might say that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You are in the village of Haven, in the Frostback Mountains, on the border of Orlais and Ferelden. Our continent is called Thedas.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I take it that you have not heard of any of those places either?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Wylaia swallowed, and took a breath. Thankfully, Leliana did not rush her. “If I were to be optimistic,” she said, her voice coming out shakily, her accent thickening. “I would say that perhaps your - They-das? - is another continent upon Nirn, and at worst, I have stepped onto the other side of the world.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And if you were not? Optimistic?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I went through an Oblivion Gate. Two. I could be...anywhere.” She reached down and wrapped her fingers tightly around her knees. “I don’t think I would be imprisoned if I were in Sovngarde, or in any part of Aetherius. And if this were still Oblivion, well - you’re too nice for that, unless this is all a trick. But there are plans beyond the mortal, so it stands to reason that there could be planes...beyond the Divine. Oh, Gods.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Wylaia closed her eyes and took another slow, deep breath - the kind they had trained her to take at High Hrothgar, to prepare herself for the Thu’um. She had no desire to Shout, but feeling the presence of the souls within her own calmed her. As much as one could be calm, given the circumstances.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“These things you call gates,” Leliana said softly, her eyes fixed upon the Dragonborn. “Do you mean tears in the air, in the sky, that shimmer with green light?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Wylaia nodded. Real Gates were not, but that did not matter - the ones she had come through were, and those were the ones that had caused this.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We call those rifts.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leliana stayed for what seemed like hours. It was long enough that food was brought in - Leliana watched, approvingly, as Wylaia sorted carefully through it and checked each part. By touch, by smell, by the smallest amount of taste. It wasn’t just that she thought they might poison her - when she had first left Helgen, on the way down to meet Ralof, she had been so hungry that she’d eaten a rabbit leg only half cooked. The stomach rot had kept her hunched over a hole for half a day, and she had no desire to repeat that in a cell where her only option was a bucket.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When she was not eating, they spoke. Wylaia explained the Gate she had found, and the land she had passed into, and the moment she’d found the strange woman in what she thought must have been some part of Oblivion. Leliana explained the Conclave, and the explosion, and that Wylaia and the still unconscious elf were the only people who had emerged.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>At least, Wylaia thought to herself, this time she had been arrested for a good reason. Though being suspected for murdering a holy woman was not unlike being suspected for being part of the Stormcloak rebellion. When you came down to it, it was all about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The conversation had turned to what was going on outside the prison when it happened - the woman on the bench began to convulse, her broken hand lighting up with the same vibrant green magic again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>On instinct, Wylaia leapt over to her and began checking her over. There had to be a connection between the magic in the woman’s hand and the seizure, just as the magic was linked the Gates. No - rifts. Could she ward it? Normally a Ward went over an entire person, or an entire group, but if she could try and isolate it - no, if she warded the magic itself, as if she were wrapping it upside down, or - no, as if she were using it to dispel magic!</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She cupped her hands wide around the woman’s hand and chanted, feeling her fingers tingle as the blue-white shield began to manifest. The magic illuminated the room, making Leliana’s expression clear as it passed from surprised to calculating to blank.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I think this is helping,” Wylaia said, although she wasn’t convinced - she’d expected to only need a Lesser Ward, but the magic in the woman’s hand was so powerful she’d pushed even more magicka into it, and it was still not enough. “But I can’t hold it for long. You said you had someone looking after her?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Nodding, Leliana turned and exited the prison in a flurry of material. It was only as the icy wind from outside hit Wylaia’s face that she realised her captor had opened the cell door to see to them - and then left it open as she departed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If it was a test, Wylaia found she didn’t care. It took all her focus to hold onto the Ward, which the woman’s magic seemed to be trying to tear asunder. It felt at once like the magic in her hand was both magic and anti-magic, as if it were both force and a ward unto itself. By the time the door to the building opened again, Wylaia was sweating from the force of holding it steady.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hm.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The man that had knelt beside Wylaia and stretched a hand over her ward was slender and graceful. He seemed to be a similar kind of elf to the woman before them - human face, pointed ears, a lean form - though his features were a little more angular and sharp. He had no hair by which to identify him further save for his dark brows, but his eyes were brown and human shaped.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How interesting,” he said, in a voice that lilted not unlike her own. “You are making some kind of barrier?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, I-”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Release the spell at once. You are only making it worse for her.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His tone turned hard, shocking Wylaia so much that she did exactly as he asked, yanking her hands back and staring at him. His expression was placid, not angry, but there had been no mistaking the command in his voice.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And sure enough, not long after the Ward dissipated, the woman before them ceased her convulsions, her breathing returning to an uneven and raspy norm.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The mark upon her hand has melded with her magic,” the man explained, reaching out to turn the woman’s now unlit hand over. He did so gently, Wylaia noticed. “By blocking it from the rest of her, you set off a battle between its magic, her own, and yours. It was logical, but foolish.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Wylaia frowned, sitting back as her magicka began to slowly replenish. It felt wrong to be empty of it; the sensation made her panic, even moreso now they had taken her weapons away. “I am sorry,” she said, before then asking, “...what is it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The mark? It is a tether of some kind, to the rift that the two of you stepped through.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Could we ward her from the rift?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The man cocked his head to the side, thoughtfully. “You seem very invested in a woman you supposedly do not know.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I have a habit of befriending people who help me escape a terrible end,” Wylaia said quietly, thinking of Ralof and his strange sense of honour, his grin lit by the fire in the house in Riverwood.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“There are certainly worse reasons to begin a friendship. I am Solas.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Wylaia.” She flashed him a small smile, then leant forward, taking the woman’s temperature. “I think she’s getting feverish. Do you have any yellow mountain flower? It’d be better to avoid salt and spadetail, we don’t want to weaken her further - and nothing else is quite as strong for this. You said she has magic, you see, and I thought perhaps if we could empower her Restoration ability…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You are an apothecary?” Solas said, raising an eyebrow.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh. Yes, I am.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leliana stepped out of the shadows, learning against the open cell door. “But one from another land, I am afraid. I know of none of the plants you have just named.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Of all of the things that Leliana had said, and all of the things she had realised since stepping through the Gate that had sent her here, nothing had hit Wylaia quite as hard as that. It hit her in the chest like a troll’s club, lingering there as a thick knot, and she found herself gasping her next breath. Clasping her hands to her mouth, she tried to draw the breaths through her nose instead, slowing them and making them longer.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Wylaia continued to gaspe, but Leliana spoke in the same calm tone, as if nothing were happening. “If I am understanding right, she means to empower the woman’s ability to heal. Would you advise this, Solas?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I had considered giving her lyrium,” the man explained, watching Wylaia thoughtfully. “But the risk of empowering the mark is too great. If there were to be some means of targeting her healing abilities in particular, then that would most certainly be of use.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Wait here. I will not be long.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When Wylaia collected herself, she and Solas fell into an unexpectedly comfortable silence. They took turns in checking over the woman, whose name Wylaia desperately wanted to know - she had asked Leliana, but it seemed no one knew who she was, beyond a delegate sent by the Dalish to observe the peace talks. Wylaia was still trying to wrap her head around the extent to which people hated magic here. The Nords had been cautious of it, in Skyrim, but rarely outright aggressive towards mages.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Some time later, Leliana reappeared, carrying a very familiar satchel, pouch and pack. Forgetting for a moment that she was still technically a prisoner, Wylaia lunged for them at once. She placed the pack aside, tucked the pouch under her arm, and knelt down next to Solas again with the satchel. Every one of her potion vials was still there, and from the looks of it still as organised as they ever had been. Idly, Wylaia manifested a Magelight in her hands and tossed it to stick to the wall, barely noticing that both Leliana and Solas stared at her as she did so.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It gave enough light for her to identify the small, bulbous flasks that contained her fortification potions.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Have you given her anything else, yet? What dosages are you using? Is she able to take full doses, or should I go smaller? By the Nine, do you even </span>
  <em>
    <span>have</span>
  </em>
  <span> potions?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Solas’s mouth twitched. “Many things, but I doubt that we would be able to know if they would react badly to one another, being as your herbalism seems to be so very different from our own. Use your weakest option; I will take half, to prove that it does what you say, and then we will give our patient the remainder.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Wylaia nodded. It wasn’t unreasonable - she always tested potions she found lying around on herself first. “Here,” she said, plucking a Potion of the Healer and holding it out. The cork on the top was marked, telling her that it had been made with yellow mountain flower - making it potent, but less prone to side effects. “It will make your healing spells stronger.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Then you will need to be able to test it,” Leliana said, kneeling down next to them. She plucked a bracer off and rolled her sleeve back, then - without much ceremony, cut two neat slices across her forearm. “It will be difficult to tell if you simply cast the spell twice, no?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was certainly dramatic, but Wylaia couldn’t argue that it was logical - neither did Solas, from the looks of things. He reached out and healed one of the cuts on Leliana’s arm, the three of them noting how fast the flesh knitted together. Then, he carefully drank half of the potion - which Wylaia knew from experience tasted like unpleasantly salty fish, the taste of the flower drowned out by the other ingredients even though she’d used far less of them. To his credit, Solas did not wince. And, as she had expected, his second spell came far faster and easier than the first had.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The two of them barely had to nod before Wylaia was moving up to the woman’s side, lifting her up so that she wouldn’t choke and helping her to swallow the potion. As she ran her fingers down the woman’s throat, gently massaging the potion down, the woman’s body began to illuminate with a gentle glow. When it faded, she was sleeping far more peacefully, her head resting gently against Wylaia’s shoulder.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Impressive,” Solas said, one eyebrow raised again. He turned to Leliana, who was cleaning the blood from her now-healed arm. “I don’t suppose the Seeker could be persuaded to permit our guest her belongings, seeing as they are quite so useful at keeping your only lead alive.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leliana smiled thinly, then reached into Wylaia’s backpack and pulled out a slender book that Wylaia recognised as her herbalism ledger. “No,” she said casually, passing the book to Solas, “but you may use her knowledge to do so. You will take her belongings into your custody when you depart.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When the door closed behind Leliana, Solas turned to Wylaia and smiled. The expression looked strange on his harsh features. “Well,” he said, opening her ledger, “that certainly could have gone worse. Now, show me those ingredients you spoke of.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Up the Mountain Path</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>After watching over Ellana through several anxious days, praying that the Dalish woman's magic will see her through, Wylaia is called urgently to the front lines. Stepping out into the thick of the Inquisition's problems for the first time, Wylaia finds that - once again - she is an invaluable resource.</p>
<p>Just not as invaluable as Ellana is.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>To say I have been overwhelmed by all the positive response to this is to underplay it. I've never written a chaptered story with 'normal' chapter sizes before - in Champion of the Veil, my chapters were huge parts of the story, and often written in advance. I wanted the experience of doing this, but I never expected it to get so much attention. It has been amazing, and incredible, and it is all thanks to the lovely people leaving kudos and comments and love.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In the days that the marked woman lay in the cell, Wylaia found herself falling into a rhythm with Solas - and, in the second day, with the apothecary Adan. He was a cranky, blunt man who seemed to like healing about as much as he liked smiling - and yet did both regardless. Wylaia found herself immediately fond of him.</p>
<p>When she slept, Adan or Solas would watch the marked woman. When she was awake, she would watch over the woman herself. “We appreciate your help,” Leliana said to her, one night when she came to secure the doors behind Adan. “But you are still a stranger, and we do not know who we can trust.” In a way, Wylaia liked the honesty. Besides, if she was going to be a prisoner, she could at least be useful.</p>
<p>She had also truly meant what she’d said to Solas. She’d never meant to befriend Ralof, not really. The rebellion was something she’d intended to stay away from as much as possible. Even after they left Helgen, and she agreed to meet him in Riverwood, she’d planned to flee. Started to, even. Of course, she’d gotten two hours in the other direction before she realised that her cloak was so burned up that she’d freeze as soon as it got dark. And there had also been the incident with the insufficiently cooked rabbit leg. And it was raining.</p>
<p>In the end she had stumbled into Riverwood cold, damp, and bearing a crudely woven basket full of mountain flower and lavender. Gerdur and Hod had taken one look at her and started clucking over her, refusing to allow her to slink off until she had slept, eaten, and most importantly warmed up. Wylaia remembered waking in the bed that wasn’t hers to see the three of them laughing over the breakfast Ralof had burned. She could still smell the charred fish.</p>
<p>It was that same sense of connection that she felt when she looked at the masked woman. Wyalia had never had siblings, but she thought that if she had, she would have liked a younger sister. So she sat patiently, soothing the woman when she seized, as if she could hear a word Wylaia was saying. On the third day she had the guards bring warm water and a cloth so that she could do something about the woman’s bloodstains, and the dirt that had crusted into her silver-white hair.</p>
<p>Sometimes, she found herself telling stories. Legends from Skyrim, even from Valenwood, just to hear a sound other than the woman’s shallow, raspy breathing. At other times she would be joined by Solas or Adan, or even very occasionally both, and the three of them would go through both Wylaia’s notes and Adan’s own. There were many similarities in their methods, it turned out, though Adan seemed mildly disgusted at her realistic sketches of the way to extract some of the more disgusting ingredients.</p>
<p>It did not last long, but Wylaia found herself falling into a comfortable rhythm nonetheless. She had always been like this. It wasn’t that she never liked to stay in one place - she’d had a house, once. She’d liked the feeling of walking in the door, out of the cold. Of lighting the fire and settling down on the rug she’d hunted and cleaned and dried herself. But she loved the world, the open world, far too much to stay in one place.</p>
<p>And when you loved the world like that, you got used to making home quickly. No matter where it was - even, it transpired, if that home was a prison.</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>The day that the woman woke up was also the day that Wylaia was set free.</p>
<p>She had thought it would happen eventually. It had become clear in the discussions with Adan that healers were few and far between in Thedas. If there were more of them, he assured her, he’d have nothing to do with it and would be left to make his potions in peace. It seemed only a matter of time before Leliana and Cassandra - the armoured woman who had arrested her in the first place - decided she was more of an asset than a threat.</p>
<p>She simply hadn’t expected it to occur quite so abruptly.</p>
<p>“You!” Cassandra called as the door to the cell slammed open. “Come with me.”</p>
<p>Already halfway to her feet out of shock, Wylaia looked down at the marked woman and then back up. “I can’t leave her al-”</p>
<p>“She will be fine for now. The guards will watch her.”</p>
<p>Mutely, Wylaia followed. Something had to have happened - she only hoped it was not something terrible. But the sight that met her when they stepped into the frigid afternoon was not reassuring. It was her pack, her satchel, and her pouch. Cassandra picked them up one by one and handed them to her, waiting as she strapped them on.</p>
<p>“How badly are your people hurt?” Wylaia asked, because it seemed the only logical answer.</p>
<p>Cassandra grimaced and started walking, beckoning for her to follow. “We have one dead. Two who are dying. One is beyond Adan’s care, and the apostate is tending the other. There are seven more who are badly wounded, and another four who have minor wounds.”</p>
<p>“What happened?”</p>
<p>“More of the rifts have been opening. Smaller, but demons pour from them constantly. Solas has told you of demons?”</p>
<p>Wylaia nodded, skipping a step or two in an attempt to keep up with the Seeker’s quick march. “They are like our Daedra, but they are tied to emotions, not spheres of influence.”</p>
<p>“Most of those that have come through are simply shades,” Cassandra explained, as they crossed a stone bridge and began to approach the sound of screaming. “This time, a demon of terror came through. It emerged from beneath our front line. There was no warning.”</p>
<p>“I am better with illnesses,” Wylaia cautioned her, as the line of wounded came into view, “not grave wounds. But I will do what I can.”</p>
<p>“That is all that I ask.” They came alongside a woman in metal armour, crossed with a red sash. Cassandra nodded at her and she fell in alongside. “This is Lysette. She will be with you every moment that you are outside your cell. If you threaten our people, she will do what is necessary.”</p>
<p>Wylaia smiled shyly at the woman, who had the good grace to look apologetic. “I understand, Seeker. Which one am I tending?”</p>
<p>“There, at the end of the line, across from Solas.”</p>
<p>“Thank you,” Wylaia said, before breaking into a run. She had already spotted the man that Cassandra had pointed to - a hunter of some kind, from the look of his clothing. There was a terrible, dark stain across his chest.</p>
<p>She was astonished to find as she knelt down that he was still alive. She felt the presence of Lysette falling into step behind her, but paid it no heed. Instead she reached into her satchel and pulled out a knife, beginning to cut the man’s clothing free. You could hurl Restoration magic at yourself and simply wait - the knowledge of your own body was enough. But there was a reason that it was far harder to heal others.</p>
<p>Taking in the breadth of his injuries, Wylaia reaffirmed her astonishment that he was still drawing breath. He had been impaled by - something. Best not to think about what. She’d never liked fighting, even after having to get used to it, and especially not with people involved.</p>
<p>Every now and then, when she was sleeping, she would remember the first time she’d seen Lydia kill a person. It had been a witch, the day they’d gone to get the knife for the Temple of Kyraneth. The woman had only been wearing robes; Lydia had killed her in two swipes of her sword. The very thought of it made bile rise in the back of Wylaia’s throat, hard and biting.</p>
<p>She pushed away the thought. She was not squeamish; you couldn’t be if you dissected animal corpses for half of your living. But she did not like to watch people die. It was usually over the most pointless of things. This man was not dying for a pointless reason, at least - but that did not make his death any the better. She hated that idea, too. The idea that you could have a good death. The idea that you would earn Sovngarde only by keeping that strange idea the Nords had. Honour.</p>
<p>Honour could go to Oblivion.</p>
<p>Closing her eyes, Wylaia drew forth the Restoration spell and held her glowing hands out over his decimated abdomen. She visualised the wound she had inspected, from the entry point at the back to the torn mess that was the front. If she didn’t fix this, right now, there was no point doing anything else. No purpose to giving him potions, or herbs.</p>
<p>After the first casting, she called for Lysette to help her turn him on his side and hold him there. The Templar frowned, but did so, watching as Wylaia pulled a waterskin from her pack. She had stopped keeping anything but pure spring water long ago - it would be clean enough, she hoped. With her other hand she grasped for a cloth scented with lavender and pressed it to her face.</p>
<p>“Take a deep breath, Lady Lysette, and hold it,” she said, not moving until the woman had complied - only then pouring the waterskin over the man’s wound, washing the contents of his guts onto the ground. Even through the cloth barrier, the stench was so terrible it set Wylaia’s stomach roiling.</p>
<p>After that they returned him to his back, and Wylaia cast the healing spell a second time. His breathing was stronger now - she risked a potion to fortify his body, then cast a third time, feeling her magicka start to deplete. With each potion that she gave him, and each one that she drank, she felt a rising panic in the back of her mind. Everything she knew about alchemy was purposeless here. She had only the ingredients in her pouch, the few dried items she kept in her pack, and nothing more. Every flask poured away the last of her craft - of her link to home.</p>
<p>But she did not like to see people die - so she kept going.</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>“Your technique is interesting,” Solas observed, when they were knelt together by a bucket of water, cleaning themselves of blood and worse. They had managed to save both of their patients, and tended those less badly off. Everyone, for now, was stable.</p>
<p>Wylaia snorted a laugh. “You mean wild and chaotic.”</p>
<p>“No,” Solas said, drying his hands off and looking at her thoughtfully. “I truly mean interesting. This place that you come from - it is not a kind place. You are used to making do with what you have.”</p>
<p>“How can you tell?”</p>
<p>In answer, Solas leant forward and plucked a bit of green from the rolled-up end of her sleeve. “You healed several people with magic, but padded one of the scout’s wounds with this moss.”</p>
<p>“Magicka isn’t an infinite resource, no matter how many potions you have on you,” Wylaia sighed, picking at a particularly stubborn bit of something beneath one nail. “It should be saved for when it’s needed, not wasted on a simple cut.”</p>
<p>“I see.”</p>
<p>Finally clean, or as clean as she was going to be, Wylaia sat back and took the drying cloth as Solas handed it to her. “I’d never learned a lot of magic, when I was younger. Or if I did, it was always for practical reasons. Fire to make camp, light to read by, basic healing for simple wounds.”</p>
<p>Solas tilted his head. “And when you were older?”</p>
<p>“It...changed,” Wylaia said, trailing off both out of a desire to not think or speak about the reasons she’d had to get better at magic, and because there was a very strange man approaching them.</p>
<p>He was short - oddly so. He was even shorter than the marked woman, which was saying something. He had red-gold hair that was held back behind his head, a fierce jaw and cheekbones to match, and most noticeably of all, he was dressed in a way that made absolutely no sense given the mountain chill. Wylaia was reasonably certain that if he leant forward, she’d be able to see his naval.</p>
<p>“Chuckles! There you are, I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” He turned his eyes upon Wylaia, smiling charismatically. “And this must be prisoner number one.”</p>
<p>“I suspect I’m prisoner number two, if anything,” Wylaia said with a small laugh. “The other one is far more important than I am.”</p>
<p>The short man’s warm smile turned into a grin. “You know, we really need to get her name.”</p>
<p>“You have never seemed particularly concerned by referring to people by their real names, Varric,” Solas pointed out, getting to his feet. “I am certain you will think of one for her. I presume we are needed?”</p>
<p>“Curly wants us up the mountain. It’s bad enough that even the Seeker didn’t say no.”</p>
<p>Wylaia frowned. “Another rift?”</p>
<p>“They have been worsening, in the past days,” murmured Solas as he picked up his staff.</p>
<p>“So have her seizures,” Wylaia added, her thoughts turning back to the cell. Lysette was still nearby, watching her, though she had paused to talk to some of the now-healed wounded. “I should go and check on her.”</p>
<p>“Well,” Varric said, hefting a crossbow that looked unlike anything Wylaia had ever seen. “I suppose we’ll save the proper introductions for later. Come on, Chuckles. Time to go save the day. Again.”</p>
<p>As they departed, Solas inclined his head to her in acknowledgement. It seemed about as much of a goodbye as she was going to get from either of them.</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>Wylaia never made it to the cell - she didn’t need to. She wove her way through the clusters of people, trying not to notice how intently they were staring at her. She had seen a few more of the elves that were like Solas and the marked woman, all of them pale skinned, with eyes of normal, human colours and shapes.</p>
<p>She did not look like them.</p>
<p>She remembered this feeling from some of the smaller towns and villages. The ones who had never seen a Bosmer before - or who were made up entirely of pale-skinned Nords. Of course, she also remembered being back in Valenwood, and being teased by the other children for the fact that her skin was lighter than most Bosmer. As if she could never quite fit in with either world, no matter what she did.</p>
<p>Wylaia ducked her head to hide her golden eyes and brown skin, and pulled her hood up to cover her reddish-brown hair. Then - because the world loved nothing if not to mess with her - she almost walked into Cassandra.</p>
<p>“Oh! I’m sorry, Seeker, I - by the Nine, you’re awake!”</p>
<p>The marked woman’s face went slack in astonishment. “It’s you - from the spiders. You’re real?”</p>
<p>“I am,” Wylaia said, stepping forward and looking the woman up and down. She was standing without trouble, though her hands were trembling - her hands that, Wylaia realised in astonishment, they had unbound. “How are you feeling?”</p>
<p>Before the woman could answer, Cassandra stepped between them. “We do not have time for this now. Lysette, take her back to the cells, then join the Commander.”</p>
<p>The Seeker placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder and began to lead her away. After a moment, Lysette did the same thing, though her touch was gentle, an encouragement rather than a command.</p>
<p>“Wait,” the marked woman said, her voice so soft that Wylaia only just heard it. She twisted, not stepping out of Cassandra’s grip, but turning just enough to look over her shoulder. “What’s your name?”</p>
<p>“Wylaia.”</p>
<p>The Dalish woman smiled, and waved with a flutter of slender fingertips. “I’m Ellana.”</p>
<p>Wylaia opened her mouth to respond, but she and Cassandra had already gotten too far for her to do anything but shout. There were enough people staring at them as it was. With a sigh, she let Lysette lead her back towards the cells.</p>
<p>A few steps in she noticed that neither of them were rushing. Lysette had even removed her hand now, and was staring at the ground with a knot in her brow. Wylaia recognised that expression. It was the expression Lydia had worn every single time Wylaia had said no, we don’t need to fight them, let’s just move on.</p>
<p>“You want to be there,” she said gently, gesturing behind them. “Helping.”</p>
<p>Lysette’s eyes flickered to her, wide with surprise. “I - yes. These people, they saved my life.”</p>
<p>“And you want to repay them.”</p>
<p>“Yes. I do. I will go to the Commander when you are secure, but it may be too late.”</p>
<p>Wylaia opened her satchel and examined the precious contents. If she could stick to just using her magic, and not using anything else…</p>
<p>“Then we’ll go now.”</p>
<p>“Lady Cassandra said -”</p>
<p>Wylaia smiled. “I know. But I’m sure she’d rather more of her people were alive than anything else. Please. I can help you.”</p>
<p>What was she doing? This was ridiculous. It was worse than the time the Alik’r had accosted her in the street and instead of sensibly saying <em>I’m sorry, I haven’t seen her</em> she’d marched straight back to the inn to warn the one Redguard she’d seen in the town. Next thing she knew she was being threatened with a knife, then sent on a mission to assassinate someone, then creeping back to Whiterun with her tail between her legs and a lie on her lips. She never found out what had happened to the Redguard woman, after they’d taken her.</p>
<p>“Lady Cassandra will have both of our heads,” Lysette said, grimacing. “But you are right. I saw what you did back there. Come. We can cut through here.”</p>
<p>The Templar set off at a brisk pace, just short of a sprint, and Wylaia stumbled in trying to catch up with her. She was made for endurance, not speed, and by the time they made it down to what looked like the bulk of the fighting she was panting for breath.</p>
<p>It was the first time Wylaia had seen any of the creatures these people called demons. Their forms were varied, and often amorphous - the bulk of them seemed to be partially ethereal figures of shadow, whilst others walked on strange, stalky legs that reminded her of a spriggan crossed with an insect. Lysette charged down one of the shadow creatures, blade raised, and Wylaia picked a spot at the centre of the soldiers, wishing she had her bow. There was too much going on to get a good angle for magic, but an arrow would’ve gotten through safety. She really should’ve learned to summon one.</p>
<p>For the mostpart she stayed back, offering healing to those who needed it. Most of them turned their nose up at her glowing palm, but a few accepted it, and more still drank the potions or chewed the plants she passed them. One man, who looked barely old enough to be in the fighting, stayed at her side after she’d healed a nasty wound to his leg. He’d been carried back to her by a tall human with a fur-lined cloak - a dangerous and foolish move, given that he’d put his back to the enemy to do it. He’d rushed off before she could say anything.</p>
<p>“You shouldn’t be on your own back here, they can come from anywhere,” the young man said, smiling gently at her.</p>
<p>“Oh, that’s - well, thank you,” Wylaia said, returning the smile. “But you should - duck!”</p>
<p>Evidently not too young to be badly trained, the boy did as he was told. The moment his shield clapped against the floor, Wylaia let loose the sharp spear of ice she’d conjured on instinct. It slammed into the central body of the shadow creature as it surged towards them, slowing its approach.</p>
<p>“You’re a mage!”</p>
<p>“I am,” Wylaia said, patting him on the back as he stood up, and letting the next spell flow into his body. “So if you could deal with that, I’d really appreciate it!”</p>
<p>The boy’s eyes glowed with the courage she’d given him. He turned and raised his shield, bashing the creature as it came close before laying into it with his sword. Some of the soldiers beyond them ran over to help, but Wylaia’s defender had already felled it before they could so much as raise their weapons.</p>
<p>A few moments later, as the young man was accepting the cheers of his comrades, Lysette fell back into step beside them.</p>
<p>“We’re pushing up to the top,” she said, gesturing. “Come on.”</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>Between Lysette and the young man who’d protected her - whose name she’d never managed to get - Wylaia had a safe journey all the way to the top of the mountain. She realised, halfway up, that they were being led back to where she’d come out. Back to the place where this Conclave had been. There were not ten thousand steps, but it felt, somehow, like going back to High Hrothgar. Only with fewer wolves, and more demons.</p>
<p>“What’s going on?” she’d asked Lysette, as they started to pick their way through the charred remnants of bodies.</p>
<p>“The prisoner is closing the rift.”</p>
<p>So her mark <em>was</em> linked to them. If she could close them, Wylaia wondered, could she open them? Like she’d assumed back in Oblivion - a mortal woman who could open Gates? Did that mean she could get her back to Skyrim, if she tried?</p>
<p>The questions were still ringing in Wylaia’s head as they formed a perimeter around the square that contained the rift. It was bigger than the one they’d been fighting down the mountain, and higher up. Below it, Ellana and those with her looked incredibly small. She was with Cassandra still, but also now with Solas and Varric. All four of them looked exhausted, and their clothes and armour were stained with blood and dirt.</p>
<p>Ellana raised her hand to the rift, and Wylaia held her breath. She let it out the moment that the demon appeared.</p>
<p>It was larger than most things she’d seen, but not bigger than a dragon. This, however, was irrelevant - because it was in front of Ellana, and it had its almighty fists raised above its head. Wylaia hurled herself over the edge of the balcony they were on, ignoring Lysette’s yells, and barely let her feet touch the ground before she Shouted.</p>
<p>
  <em>“Wuld...nah kest!”</em>
</p>
<p>Whirlwind sprinting had never ceased to disorient her, but she’d learned to continue on despite the nausea and the instability. As soon as she skidded to a halt in front of Ellana, she threw her hands up in a blur of blue light and sent up the biggest ward she could manage. The demon’s fists crashed down, one bouncing off the shield, the other smashing into her shoulder. All of the breath left Wylaia’s chest in a single thrust; to hold the spell, she had to grit her teeth. She needed to Shout, to push the creature away, but her Thu’um’s own breath needed to replenish. She inhaled, but it wasn’t enough to summon her Voice.</p>
<p>“Over here!” yelled a voice - Cassandra’s. She was across from them, bashing her sword against her shield and summoning the creature’s attention. It turned, lightning crackling amidst its form as it summoned what looked like a huge whip made of sparks.</p>
<p>Wylaia took the opportunity to run, pleased to see that Ellana had already done the same thing. They stood together under a dome that Ellana had summoned - it felt, as Wylaia passed through it, like the same sort of magic as her ward. She let her own shield drop and pressed her hand to her shoulder, flooding the crush wound with magic.</p>
<p>“Drink this,” she said, pulling out one of the few vials she kept in her pouch and offering it to Ellana. “It will let you cast more spells.”</p>
<p>It was silly of the woman to just nod and down the thing, but Wylaia wasn’t going to tell her off for trusting a stranger in the middle of a battle. Ellana choked slightly - it was probably one of the ones made with fire salts - but then smiled as her face flooded with colour. She lifted a hand and begun casting. Fist she held her staff up, and peals of frost surged from it, crashing into the demon’s side - then she lifted her hand and chanted until more ice collected on her fingertips. She curled her fingers into a fist and the ice vanished, appearing instead around the creature itself.</p>
<p>She was good. Very good. Wylaia found herself smiling, and took a half-step in front of the elf as she continued to cast. She did not drink a potion of her own - there were too few left for that - but she began to summon bolts of fire and hurl them into the creature’s flank. Lightning came more naturally to her, but fire was easier, less draining.</p>
<p>It was a long battle. At one point the demon became covered in chitinous black armour, and it was only clever thinking on Ellana’s part that saved them - she managed to disrupt the rift in some way, causing the armour to shatter. At another moment, the demon brought the same vicious shock whip down on Varric, who crumpled to the ground. Both of them began to run, but they were too far away, and the demon was between them. It was Solas who stepped to the side, vanishing, and reappearing beside Varric.</p>
<p>By the end of it, when the demon fell, the four of them were stood around Ellana in a diamond, standing guard as she lifted her marked hand and closed the rift. The stench of kicked up dirt, of blood, of magic charring the air reminded Wylaia of a thousand battles she hadn’t wanted to fight. Beneath the rift, the air seared not with heat, but with potential, just like the Oblivion Gate she’d been pulled through had.</p>
<p>When Ellana’s hand splayed open with green light, the world became nothing but blinding glare for a moment - then, focusing, Wylaia realised that she could see energy pulsing through that glare. That there were ripples of energy cascading from Ellana’s hand to the rift, and back again, the two of them joined in some symbiotic relationship.</p>
<p>Wylaia found it beautiful, but terrible - the same way she had felt when she had stepped over the corpse of the huge draugr to see glowing words on a curved wall. Her soul, and all the souls within it, thrummed in the same way that Ellana’s mark did. They weren’t the same, even still. Just two songs sung to the same rhythm, their melody and words unique, a pair of dirges that lamented the loss of their freedom.</p>
<p><em>That</em> was why she felt this connection. It wasn’t because they’d escaped together, like she had with Ralof. Ralof had been able to go back to his normal life, his family, the battle he had chosen to fight. Wylaia had walked into a world where everyone went from demanding to know who she was, to proclaiming it an honour to meet her. Because Skyrim needed her, no matter how much she didn’t want it to. She was Dragonborn. She was chosen.</p>
<p>Just like this mark had chosen Ellana.</p>
<p>The scream that the Dalish woman let out as she collapsed was vicious, and terrible, and it was only Cassandra catching Ellana that stopped her from enduring another vicious fall as she collapsed to the ground.</p>
<p>But the rift was closed. She had done it.</p>
<p>No one questioned Wylaia as she began tending Ellana. No one asked for her bag and pouch and satchel. No one bound her hands when they got back to the village. Instead, Cassandra ushered her and Solas into a warm building that Wylaia did not recognise, placed Ellana on the bed, and left the two of them to the tricky business of keeping her alive.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you all for being so excited to discover more about Wylaia, and to see Ellana's story unfold with her in it. I hope you enjoyed this next chapter - I'll see you next week with another! &lt;3</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Back to Haven</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Wylaia settles into her position as the Herald of Andraste's personal healer, makes a new friend, and deals with some complicated questions about her freedom.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I finished this earlier than expected and couldn't wait until the coming week to post it! Thank you all so, so much for your incredible support. I'm really overwhelmed by it, and it's made me resolve to comment a lot more when I'm doing my own reading.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There was only one bed in the quarters they took Ellana to, but Wylaia did not mind. There was a fireplace, and a rug, and in many ways that was all she needed - especially now her pack had been returned to her. She’d become so accustomed to a bedroll and the thin, hard mattresses of Skyrim’s inns that she had trouble sleeping in anything too nice these days.</p>
<p>Wylaia wondered if someone had owned the hut before. It seemed likely, because there was even entertainment amongst its accoutrements - an odd provision for former prisoners. Amongst them were some books, which Wylaia tore through in the first few hours, and even a lute. Best of all, though, was the desk. It had ink and charcoal enough to fulfil the itch that had been in Wylaia’s fingers for some time - to write down all of the things Solas and Adan had been telling her of Thedas’s alchemy and magic. Or, at least, everything she could recall.</p>
<p>She had ample time to do so, for Ellana’s sleep was at once more tumultuous and more stable, this time. The Dalish woman did not have seizures, as she had done before. For the mostpart, Wylaia worked at the desk or read by the fire, getting up every now and then to check on Ellana’s breathing and temperature. She was barely holding on, but she was holding on.</p>
<p>The ache in Wylaia’s shoulder, from where the demon had hit her - a pride demon, Solas had told her with a grimace - was almost gone now. She supposed she ought to be grateful that they hadn’t stripped her of her armour. Perhaps they hadn’t noticed the enchantments laced into it; not that all of them would have been useful in that fight. Especially not when she felt uncomfortable revealing too much of her power.</p>
<p><em>Which you did wonderfully by Shouting in front of half of their army</em>, she thought to herself wryly. On that, she’d been fortunate. Lisette had to have noticed, but the battle had raged so hard that even her Thu’um had only added to the din. Most people would likely interpret what she had done as the same thing she’d seen Solas do - some kind of transportational magic.</p>
<p>She had not seen Lisette since. The Templar wasn’t even stationed outside the hut - Wylaia had discovered this when emptying the chamber pot just after midnight. Idly, Wylaia found herself hoping that the woman had not gotten into too much trouble for defying Cassandra’s orders.</p>
<p>The hours passed slowly, until at dawn, Adan arrived with a dent in his brow and the instructions to: “Bloody well get some sleep, woman, or you’ll be of no use to anyone.”</p>
<p>Chuckling under her breath, and reminded of the times that Lydia had told her the very same thing, Wylaia stretched her bedroll in front of the fire. Another two logs loaded in, her head on the ground, and she was asleep in moments. That was another thing Lydia had sworn about - her ability to fall asleep anywhere, no matter what. Wylaia had never had the heart to tell her that back in Valenwood, you learned to sleep in a tree, your only safety the rope tying you to the trunk.</p>
<p>By the time she woke it was noon, and Adan had switched places with Solas. She watched the elven mage for a few moments before she spoke, noting that he seemed able to hold himself incredibly still - the sort of thing she’d only managed after weeks of failing to sneak past the hordes of sleeping dragur that populated Skyrim’s tombs and caverns.</p>
<p>“How is she doing?” Wylaia asked eventually, rubbing her eyes clean of sleep dust.</p>
<p>Solas sighed, and rose from leaning over Ellana’s prone form. “She lives, for now.”</p>
<p>“Damning her with faint praise, I see.”</p>
<p>“Hmph,” Solas snorted, switching his gaze to Wylaia. He had an intent way of looking that reminded her of a Wispmother - ethereal and piercing. “It is only by our collective efforts that she remains so. If I intended to insult her, I would point that out instead.”</p>
<p>Wylaia frowned. “For someone working very hard to save her life,” she observed, “you seem to dislike Ellana a great deal.”</p>
<p>“It is not...” Solas began, before pausing. He sighed, and sat in the chair at the small table that stood by Ellana’s bed. “I do not dislike her. It is unfair of me, perhaps, to tarnish her with the brush of her people.”</p>
<p>“Are your people not her people?”</p>
<p>Solas chuckled, and averted his gaze. “That word - people - it has a meaning you do not know, here. We are the same, and yet we are not. You have noted her tattoos? They are a mark of the Dalish. It is how we identified her origins even before we knew anything of her.”</p>
<p>“Do they have meaning? The markings, that is.”</p>
<p>“...yes. The Dalish mark themselves with what they believe to be the symbols of their Gods. They call them vallaslin. The marking that Ellana bears is dedicated to the Goddess known as Mythal.”</p>
<p>Shuffling herself slowly out of her bedroll, Wylaia made her way to the outer section of the hut and picked up the water bowl. It was cold from being left by the open window, which suited her. Cold water was the best way to wake up. As she sat down and began to wash her face, she pondered Solas’s words.</p>
<p>“You said...‘what they believe to be’. Do you not believe them?”</p>
<p>“I believe that the world is far more complicated than most people understand, and so is its history. After all, history is that which combines the complexities of the world and the pride of its people.”</p>
<p>It was Wylaia’s turn to chuckle. “On that, I think I rather agree.”</p>
<p>When she finished patting her face dry with a cloth, Wylaia looked up to see Solas staring at her again. “You were very careful, when speaking with Adan and I, not to mention much of where you come from - save for the topic of our discussion.”</p>
<p>“I wasn’t certain you knew,” Wylaia said, beginning to pack things away, her face now fresh and awake. “Leliana strikes me as the sort of person only to reveal things when she thinks it necessary. And you are...what was it they called you? An apostate?”</p>
<p>“Indeed.”</p>
<p>Wryly, Wylaia asked, “Indeed you’re an apostate, or indeed Leliana keeps secrets?”</p>
<p>“Both, I suspect. At least in their eyes, for the first,” Solas replied with a thin smile. “The Chantry consider anyone who is outside of the Circles to be an apostate, regardless of whether or not they ever entered one.”</p>
<p>“That seems rather contrary to the meaning of apostate.”</p>
<p>“You did not have a Chantry, or Circles in - Skyrim?”</p>
<p>Ah. So he did know - something, at least. In a way, it made Wylaia feel even more comfortable. She stood, and moved to tip the water out of the window, taking her time before replying. “No. Leliana explained them, but the closest we had to a Circle was the Mages’ Guild - which had its own problems, but you could still join and leave freely. Religion is a little more complex. We did not worship a single Divine being, as you do.”</p>
<p>Solas looked at Ellana, then back at Wylaia. “I would enjoy hearing of both,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “That is, if you have the time.”</p>
<p>Chuckling, Wylaia sat back in front of the fire and began to tell him about the Nine. It was best, she thought, to save the story of Winterhold for another time. Not to mention that there were also people who worshipped the Daedra, and that the Daedra themselves were also complicated. No...best to stick to the basics. For now.</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>Adan’s next order, when he turned up at lunchtime, was for Wylaia to: “Bloody well get out of this house, woman, aren’t you bored of being a prisoner yet?”</p>
<p>She really did like him.</p>
<p>Even with permission, it was hard to shake the sense of being on edge when she stepped out of the hut. As if they were going to cuff her and throw her back in the very moment her boots hit snow.</p>
<p>She’d left her pack inside, but had her satchel and pouch belted on. It was a habit she’d never been able to break, even long after her Restoration magic had improved. In Valenwood, she’d been the only one apart from her grandmother who knew much about herbs - and when her grandmother had passed, she was the only person who could deal with injury and illness, unless the mages were feeling particularly charitable. Which they rarely were. Besides - there were some things magic just wasn’t as good at. Why wait an agonising poison out when you could cure it?</p>
<p>Thoughts of Grandmother, and of the village where she’d grown up, shifted around in the back of Wylaia’s mind as she lifted her head and looked out at the bustling town. Haven looked as though it had endured a great deal through stubbornness and grit. There wasn’t a building that didn’t have something patched, and every single person there seemed as happy in the mountain chill as the hardiest Nord. It was comforting.</p>
<p>What was confusing, however, was the clusters of people gathered outside the hut. They seemed not to care that it was snowing, or that half of them were shivering. Some were spilling out of the other buildings that flanked Ellana’s, and all of them turned to observe Wylaia as she emerged from the door and took a few steps forward.</p>
<p>“Is she awake?”</p>
<p>“Has the Herald awoken?”</p>
<p>“Will she recover?”</p>
<p>As the voices flew at her in a flurry, Wylaia rocked back a step. It took her a moment to realise that their tones were not sharp with accusation, but with a kind of worry that was born more of veneration than concern. Too hushed, too forced. The tone that every guard in Whiterun had taken with her the day she’d killed her first dragon - with a novice’s flame spell and a bow and arrows that she’d looted from the corpse of an Imperial.</p>
<p>In Skyrim, Wylaia had dealt with this by smiling politely and walking away - but when she tried that with the mob before her, they simply followed her, still peppering her with questions. She managed to get all the way to where the village opened up before one of them grabbed her arm.</p>
<p>It was an old man with a kindly face, who reminded her of Arnegir. Well - if Arnegir had been nice. “Please! Outsider, you must tell us. The others will give us no news of her.”</p>
<p>Taking a deep breath, Wylaia sighed, and stopped to turn around. “She still sleeps. She will need to do so for as long as it takes her body to recover.”</p>
<p>“Can you not heal her faster?” another voice cried - this time a woman, who was at Wylaia’s other side. They had, she realised, surrounded her.</p>
<p>“No,” Wylaia explained calmly, in the firm-but-kind voice she’d learned from Danica in the Whiterun Temple. “She has been through something incredibly taxing. She needs rest. Her magic is powerful enough to heal her body on its own, but if we interfere, we will only prevent that.”</p>
<p>“That’s all very well, dear,” said the old man, “but how do we know you’ve any notion of how to heal the Herald in the first place?”</p>
<p>“She should be in the Chantry!”</p>
<p>“Andraste’s love will heal Her Herald!”</p>
<p>By this point, Wylaia had reconsidered her opinion on the old man - he was definitely like Arnegir. He had her arm in a vice grip now, and the others had completely surrounded her. There was no way out, unless she wanted to harm them - or Shout again, but neither of those would help even if she was prepared to do them. The only way she was going to get out of this was through talking.</p>
<p>“I have been training as an alchemist for all of my life,” she explained patiently, trying not to shout over them. If they wanted to listen to her, they could stop yelling. “I may not be of this land, but I have spent many hours consulting Apothecary Adan and Master Solas -”</p>
<p>“Apostates!”</p>
<p>“Traitors to the Chantry!”</p>
<p>“- and we are of one mind on this. Magic may heal wounds in a miraculous way, but it can do nothing for the fatigue a body suffers when -”</p>
<p>“Now she says magic is bad! Whose side are you even on?”</p>
<p>Sighing, Wylaia reached up and pinched the bridge of her nose - before promptly being jostled again, and finding herself stumbling. “If you would just let me finish...”</p>
<p>The crowd began to shout over her again, but the din was cut short by a piercing whistle. In a matter of moments, Wylaia found herself going from the centre of an agitated mob to being at the heart of a scattered circle of very sheepish people. The source of the whistle was a tall human that Wylaia recognised, after a moment, as the one who had bought the wounded young man to her in the battle by the rift. The very same young man who was stood next to him, face knotted in concern behind his strange hood.</p>
<p>“That’s quite enough,” snapped the taller man, whose voice carried in the way she remembered Ulfric’s resounding. “If you truly wish the Herald to recover, you will cease this ridiculous harassment of her healer.”</p>
<p>As the crowd dispersed, Wylaia opened her mouth to thank the unexpected saviour - but he had already gone. The young man, however, ran up to her at once and began checking her over for wounds.</p>
<p>“Are you okay?” he asked, as she batted his hands away. “Sorry, it’s just - well, I didn’t know what to do, I saw you in the middle of the crowd and I figured I’d get the Commander, because he had the loudest voice, much louder than mine, at any rate. Honestly I’m a little bit scared of him.”</p>
<p>No. No, she wasn’t okay. It was the most she’d been reminded of home in the whole time she’d been in Thedas.</p>
<p>“Actually,” Wylaia found herself saying, as she pressed a hand to a chest that felt suddenly tight, “is there somewhere quieter we can go? I wasn’t quite prepared for...that.”</p>
<p>The young man nodded at once, and gestured for her to follow him. He led her up a path to the left, past several tents and wandering soldiers, to what seemed to be the only building made wholly of stone. Wylaia had seen its shadow even from where they’d been. Its architecture was like none she recognised; where Nord buildings were either incredibly blocky stone structures, or gabled wooden ones, this building had an a curve to both its central roof and the others that descended from it. It was built not with columns, but with shapes into its face, and bore a huge rounded archway framing its large wooden doors.</p>
<p>Inside, Wylaia found herself immediately free of the bustle of the exterior. She felt the breath she had been holding flutter free, and practically sighed into the chair that the young man led her to.</p>
<p>“Thank you,” she exhaled, manging a smile.</p>
<p>He smiled back. “You’re welcome. I promise it’s not...all like that here. I’m Jim, by the way.”</p>
<p>Wylaia shook his hand as he offered it. “Wylaia.”</p>
<p>“I should’ve said that a while back, you know, but we were...”</p>
<p>“A little busy.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” Jim said, laughing.</p>
<p>It was warm enough inside that Wylaia took her gloves off, settling them in her lap and relishing the feeling of not being trapped in thick leather - even if it was lined in fur. The irony of sweating like a pig in order to avoid the cold had never quite left her. They sat there for a moment, until it became too awkward, and Wylaia realised she ought to do that thing people did. Small talk. She’d always been terrible at it. People seemed so keen to offer her their thoughts on everything from the civil war to the Greybeards calling the Dragonborn, but she’d never gotten the hang of talking back.</p>
<p>“What do you do here, Jim?”</p>
<p>“Oh! I’m a scout, miss. For Sister Nightingale.”</p>
<p>Wylaia frowned. “You were very close to the fighting for someone who serves as a scout.”</p>
<p>“The Commander says I’m never allowed to hold a shield again,” admitted Jim, with a wince. “Says my technique’s so bad I only killed that shade by luck. Mostly, I run messages - between him and Sister Nightingale, and sometimes others. Reports and the like.”</p>
<p>Given how sheepish he already seemed about fighting, Wylaia decided not to mention that it hadn’t been luck at all, but magic. Still, spells of courage did nothing if you didn’t have enough already to use them. She suspected he was a lot stronger than he gave himself credit for. Even if he did have an incredibly odd name.</p>
<p>“This is a lovely building,” Wylaia said, after another moment. Apparently Jim didn’t know how to small talk either, and she would have to carry the conversation.</p>
<p>“It’s the Chantry, miss. It’s my favourite place, though I don’t get much of a chance to come here.”</p>
<p>Carefully, Wylaia said, “The Chantry’s reach did not...extend to where I came from. Do you have the time to show me around?”</p>
<p>Jim smiled brightly. “Here, or the whole of Haven?”</p>
<p>“Well, since you’re offering...”</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>By the time Jim’s tour had finished, Wylaia had gained a new sense of how organised - and not organised - Haven really was. Once they’d started walking, Jim seemed to have gotten over his nerves, and instead chatted liberally about everything they were passing. She learned that the Quartermaster was not well-liked, that the one general store had a tendency to overcharge, and that the Commander trained his soldiers for eight long hours every day. They had explored Adan’s apothecary, passed a tavern that looked surprisingly full for the early afternoon, said hello to Varric, and even visited the blacksmith’s.</p>
<p>When they’d stepped out beyond the walls, to where the soldiers were training and the smiths were working, Wylaia had looked out on the icy land before her and felt her toes twitching with the need to explore. She’d spotted several plants on the way round that looked like the elfroot she’d been shown, and it had taken all of her willpower to smile and keep walking rather than make Jim stop.</p>
<p>Of course, the moment he vanished to take care of his work, she’d gone right back there and spent a good while examining the leaves - the way they were green at the base and turned paler towards the tips of their furred surfaces. They had an almost waxy feel to them, and the stems were hardy, which was unsurprising for anything that grew in this climate. Adan had told her they mostly ground the leaves, but she couldn’t help but wonder if the roots were useful too.</p>
<p>Her weapons had still not been returned to her, so she had no knife to cut the plant with. Grimacing, Wylaia snapped off one of the stems, pushing away her grandmother’s voice in her head as it said: <em>child, you know better than to bruise the plant in that way. </em></p>
<p>She’d gathered several more clippings by the time Cassandra found her. She was holding them in her left hand like a posy of flowers, and the short-haired woman’s expression made Wylaia immediately feel that she’d done something wrong. She looked from Cassandra to the elfroot stems and back again.</p>
<p>“This is okay, yes? I’m sorry - where I come from, people trust that if you’re picking, it’s for good use.”</p>
<p>Cassandra frowned in confusion. “It is fine.” Then, without changing her expression, she said, “Follow me. Leliana and I would like to speak with you.”</p>
<p>They went into the Chantry, to the back room that Jim had pointed out - the room where the ‘people in charge’ met. Wylaia could not decide from this, or from Cassandra’s silence, whether it was a good sign or a bad sign.</p>
<p>The room they entered was large, but felt enclosed - in no small part due to the huge table that filled the room, a map laid out upon it. Several markers covered its surface, but even more were placed to the side, awaiting use. It reminded Wylaia of the side room in the Palace of the Kings, which she’d only ever glanced in - not wanting to get too close to the would-be High King and his rebellion, even if she had once shared an execution cart with him.</p>
<p>There were several chairs to the side, along with more bookcases that piqued her attention, but she had no time to examine the room further - because there were several people gathered before her. Leliana was there, for once with her hood back, revealing a bob of red hair that bore several thin plaits. Beside her was the tall, fur-mantled man who had thrown Jim at her and dispersed the crowd earlier that day. He was looking at her with a decidedly uncertain expression, whilst Leliana had her standard lack of one.</p>
<p>“You know Leliana, of course,” Cassandra said, gesturing in the woman’s direction. “This is Commander Cullen.”</p>
<p>Wylaia nodded her head in greeting. “I owe you thanks for your earlier rescue,” she said, before noticing that his gaze was upon her hands. Realising she was still holding the elfroot, she hastily tucked it away in her satchel. “I was...slightly stuck.”</p>
<p>“Those people have been forming mobs outside the Herald’s chambers since we brought her back,” the man said, in clear displeasure. He had a voice that reminded Wylaia of home, rich and smooth. “I’m sorry you had to endure that.”</p>
<p>“It is in our interest to allow them to continue,” Leliana pointed out, her eyes flicking between them. “After all, it was only a few days ago that they were calling for her execution.”</p>
<p>Cassandra grimaced. “Some still are.”</p>
<p>“Precisely,” replied Leliana. “Which is why it is vital to encourage their support of her. And of our friend here.”</p>
<p>The smile she flashed Wylaia was small, and sweet, and made something in her stomach clench. Delphine had smiled like that, before Wylaia’s curiosity had gotten the better of her and she’d finally agreed to follow the woman to Kynesgrove. Hopefully, she would not have to kill a dragon in front of Leliana to get her to trust her. It would...probably incite more questions than it answered.</p>
<p>“We must discuss your position here,” Cassandra stated, taking up a position on Leliana’s other side. They were now each stood before one side of the large table, leaving Wylaia feeling unsure if she was being invited to join, or judged by a council.</p>
<p>“That makes sense,” Wylaia said, taking a breath and stepping forward. “I don’t exactly fit in.”</p>
<p>Cassandra nodded, before replying with a frankness that Wylaia found herself appreciating. “Your appearance is unlike many of the elves we have here. However, your ears are pointed. This is enough for them to presume you to simply be some...unusual manner of elf..”</p>
<p>Lips quirking to the side, Wylaia self-consciously rubbed at her cheekbone. “When I was growing up,” she said drily, “I used to be mocked for looking too human. I suppose that will come in handy.”</p>
<p>“Your kind generally look less human?” Cullen asked, looking surprised.</p>
<p>“Mm. I have some sketches of some people from home, if you’re curious.”</p>
<p>Leliana tilted her head. “I had thought your artwork to be specific to your herbal studies.”</p>
<p>“Not always. Well, mostly. Occasionally when I was travelling I would miss people, and try to draw them as I remembered them. They never came out quite right. Memories are funny, like that.”</p>
<p>A strange expression that Wylaia could not quite discern crossed Leliana’s face.</p>
<p>“At any rate,” Cassandra said, clearing her throat loudly. “You will be able to pass as an elf, though not a Dalish one, given your lack of markings. We suggest that you remain circumspect about your heritage. This will likely lead people to believe you are from Tevinter.”</p>
<p>“Tevinter?” Wylaia asked. She had heard it said before; it was a place in Thedas, a country.</p>
<p>“The people of Tevinter are generally of darker complexions,” Leliana explained. “As are those from Antiva. To a lesser extent Nevarra, as well.”</p>
<p>“Then why would they believe that one in particular?”</p>
<p>Cullen gestured with the hand not on his sword. “Your - magic. Those of Tevinter have a different relationship with it, and as someone who has never been in a Circle, it would be difficult for you to pretend otherwise.”</p>
<p>“You explained the Circles,” Wylaia said, glancing at Leliana. “When we were discussing the Conclave. I understand. I do not wish to put you or your people at risk, and - it would be a lot to explain.”</p>
<p>Leliana nodded. “Your voice will help you as well. Your accent is close to that shared by Tevinter and the nobles in Ferelden and the Free Marches.”</p>
<p>“An accent like yours, Commander? It sounds like those from my homeland.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” Cullen said, with a nod. “But you do not share it?”</p>
<p>Wylaia chuckled, and rubbed at her cheek again. “I have this awful habit of picking up the accent of wherever I’m travelling,” she admitted. “In Skyrim, the Nords speak very differently. It has rubbed off on me, I think.”</p>
<p>“It will do, at least,” Cassandra said.</p>
<p>This all seemed very well, but Wylaia couldn’t help but notice that there were certain things that - well, they weren’t discussing. Like whether she was free to go. Not that she knew where she would go - the map in front of her showed a vast place that she longed to explore but knew she would get lost in almost immediately. Not to mention that they had their own civil war going on, here. Even with Cassandra’s bluntness, the people before her seemed to lack some of the urgency the Nords had had. Evidently, she’d just need to ask.</p>
<p>“Pardon me,” she said, “but since we’re talking about my...position here. Am I still a prisoner?”</p>
<p>The three of them exchanged glances, but it was Leliana who answered. “No,” she said, with a pause that said but. “It would, however, be safer for you to remain with us.”</p>
<p>Wylaia blinked. “Oh, I wasn’t - I’m relatively certain I’d get myself killed if I went off on my own. And I wouldn’t want to go before Ellana’s better. I was really just wondering if I could have my weapons back. I worked quite hard to make them.”</p>
<p>“You made them?” asked Cullen, looking perplexed.</p>
<p>“Some. I’m not exactly a master craftsman, but I know how to maintain my tools, and I’m something of an experienced enchanter.”</p>
<p>“Ensure the Herald of Andraste wakes up,” Leliana said lightly, “and you can have whatever you wish.”</p>
<p>This was, Wylaia supposed, not the worst compromise.</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>She went straight back to the hut from the map room. It had been several hours now, and even Adan couldn’t complain about her relieving him at this point. Or rather, he’d still complain, but it wouldn’t stop him from accepting she was right.</p>
<p>No mobs prevented her reaching the hut this time, though she noticed they were still loitering. Did they not have anything better to do? Most people here seemed to be hard at work, but the ones gathering perpetually outside Ellana’s hut - well. Evidently they considered her to be of immeasurably more importance than when they’d thought her a murderer.</p>
<p>“How is she?” Wylaia asked, as she closed the door lightly behind her. Adan was seated at the desk, writing in the journal they’d been keeping.</p>
<p>He wrinkled his nose up. “Same. Mostly.”</p>
<p>“No improvement at all?”</p>
<p>“Stirred a little, few hours back. Nothing else. Think she’s got a fever starting.”</p>
<p>Wylaia pursed her lips. “At home I would start dosing her water with fire salts. Helps with the hydration, and the magic in them would make her sweat. The fever breaks faster, that way, and if we can catch it before it gets too much worse -”</p>
<p>“- it’ll put less strain on her body. Aye, I get you. Blood lotus might do the trick. We use it in Antivan fire, but it’s digestible.”</p>
<p>“Is that not the one your notes mentioned was hallucinogenic?”</p>
<p>Adan opened his mouth and then closed it again. “Bugger. Good point. Let’s not. ‘Specially not on a mage. Your memory’s terrifying, by the by.”</p>
<p>“I’ll use my fire salts,” Wylaia said, ignoring his comment. “I’ve not a lot left, but if she goes into a full fever now...”</p>
<p>“Yeah. It’ll be worth it. Look, I know we can’t replace -”</p>
<p>“Adan, the only hope I have of getting home is lying on that bed.”</p>
<p>He sighed, and closed his journal. “Aye, I know.”</p>
<p>Her fingers already flicking through the satchel to find the small, warm pouch of fire salts, Wylaia flashed him a small smile. “I’ll take an inventory and work out how bad it is. If we can get her through this, then we can sit down and work out proper substitutes.”</p>
<p>“It’s a date,” Adan said, then quickly added, “ehm. I don’t mean - Maker. You know what I mean.”</p>
<p>“I look forward to it. Really.”</p>
<p>As he passed her, Adan snorted. “I know you do. You’ve not exactly made it a secret. Who sketches elfroot?”</p>
<p>The sound that came out of Wylaia’s lips was not quite a laugh. Strange - she’d intended it to be. Instead it had emerged as a breathy rush of something like panic, noticeable enough that Adan stopped and placed a hand on his shoulder.</p>
<p>“Look,” he said, quietly. “I can’t even think of - if someone put me in another land and told me nothing I knew was worth a sovereign, I wouldn’t be holding up half as well as you are. You’re doing good.”</p>
<p>Wylaia tried and failed to smile. “Thanks, Adan.”</p>
<p>“Just - shit. It’s okay to not be holding up. You need to do that, I’ve got some proper dwarven ale hidden away. Secret stash. Don’t tell the others.”</p>
<p>That made her laugh, and think of the bottle of Nord mead she still had hidden in her pack. “It’s a date,” she said, her smile working this time. Then clarified: “An alchemy date.”</p>
<p>Patting her twice more on the shoulder, Adan turned and left the hut, leaving her alone with Ellana’s raspy breaths. In retrospect, ‘alchemy date’ wasn’t exactly much better.</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>That night, when the worst of Ellana’s fever broke, Wylaia laid down on the bed next to her and held a damp cloth to the Dalish woman’s forehead. Every now and then, when the cloth had warmed up once more, Wylaia would press her hand to it and summon just enough frost magic to refresh it again.</p>
<p>“You know,” she said softly, “this would be a lot easier if you didn’t wake up. Waking up is so, so much harder. The things that come after you wake up will be even worse.”</p>
<p>She paused, then; listening to the gentle rise and fall of Ellana’s breath. It was no longer rasping, which was a good sign. A very good sign. But it was still a little shallower than Wylaia would have liked.</p>
<p>“The thing is, people are selfish. It would be selfish of you to stay dead. It would be selfish of you to wake up and flee this place. It is selfish of those people out there to make you into something you are not. It is selfish of me to want you to wake up, because your hand might be the only thing that can get me home.”</p>
<p>Wylaia pushed a stray lock of silver-white hair from where it had become stuck on Ellana’s cheek, revealing the rich green tattoo underneath it.</p>
<p>“It is selfish of me to want to stay.”</p>
<p>She chuckled, softly, and shifted - lying on her back and looking up at the high, open ceiling.</p>
<p>“Wake up soon, Ellana. I would like, at last, to have someone to be selfish with.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you for reading! &lt;3</p>
<p>PS: Oh god I promise she'll wake up next chapter.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Awake at Last</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The Herald of Andraste finally wakes up, and promptly declares her opinion on that particular title. Wylaia finally gets to make an important visit, and collect some things that are owed to her...bringing up some complicated thoughts.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>As always, thank you all for such amazing, wonderful support &lt;3 As mentioned this is my first time doing a long-term chaptered fic, and I really hadn't expected it to get noticed so early on. Thank you for taking a risk with reading my take on this crossover when it's still so young! &lt;3</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Wylaia woke to the sound of coughing, and briefly wondered why her throat wasn’t contracting, because the sound was coming from so close to her head. Then, she realised she was lying on the bed, as she had done for the last two nights, and that the sound was actually just to her right. Sitting up at once, she turned to find Ellana attempting to do the same, though slowly and with shaking arms.</p><p>“Whoa, there,” Wylaia said softly, placing an arm around Ellana’s shoulders. “Slowly.”</p><p>“Co-uld I-”</p><p>“Water. Of course. Hold on, let me -”</p><p>Pushing several of the cushions behind Ellana to hold her up, Wylaia slipped over to the counter that held the drinking water. She filled a goblet and passed it into the woman’s trembling hands, gently helping guide it to her lips. She went to warn Ellana to take small sips, but the Dalish mage was already doing so.</p><p>Wylaia smiled, and sat on the side of the bed. “How are you feeling?” she asked, taking the goblet back when Ellana’s hands shook too much to hold it.</p><p>“Did it work?” Ellana asked in a voice that lilted with hope.</p><p>“The rift? Yes, it’s closed. The Breach itself is not gone, but Solas says that it will no longer keep growing.”</p><p>When Ellana sighed, Wylaia saw the woman’s shoulders curl in with relief. Reaching out, she placed a hand on hers. They sat there in silence for several long minutes, as Ellana adjusted to sitting up, and Wylaia occasionally handed her the goblet to take a few more small sips. They’d need to move her to broth as soon as possible - keeping her nourished whilst she’d been asleep had been difficult - but now wasn’t the time.</p><p>“Alright,” Ellana said eventually, reaching up to sweep her hair back over one shoulder. It was extraordinarily straight, especially in comparison to Wylaia’s wavy hair that was just shy of curls, and looked as if it had been entirely shaved over one side - though with all her convalescence it was growing back, now. “What did I miss?”</p><p>The sound of the front door flying open drowned out Wylaia’s interruption. Cutting off abruptly, she leapt to her feet and held one hand out, summoning a Ward in front of her - then let it fall as quickly as she had put it up. Already a heap upon the ground, the intruder had stumbled to her knees as soon as she’d seen the two of them.</p><p>“Oh! My Ladies! I humbly beg your forgiveness,” the elven woman sobbed, bringing her hands together as if in prayer.</p><p>Wylaia knotted her brows together. “Whatever for?”</p><p>“For - for interrupting you, of course! For intruding!”</p><p>“Were you sent here?” Ellana asked, as she gently shifted herself to the edge of the bed. She did not try to get up, which was fortunate, because it meant Wylaia did not have to stop her.</p><p>The woman, who seemed to now be crying, nodded her head and held out a small box. “Yes, my lady. To bring this delivery to your healer, from the Apothecary, and to tell you that Seeker Cassandra wishes to see you at once.”</p><p>A warm, wide smile lit Ellana’s pale face. “Well, then you have nothing to apologise for at all, do you? You have bought us your delivery, and given your message.”</p><p>“Oh. But I disturbed you, my lady.”</p><p>“Wylaia is very protective of me,” replied Ellana, “for which I am very grateful. You surprised her, yes. But that is not a disturbance.”</p><p>The servant nodded, slowly, and began to get to her feet. “Then I apologise for surprising you, lady healer.”</p><p>There were, Wylaia mused, about a dozen ways in which she could correct that title, but it was probably best not to. It wasn’t as if she <em>liked</em> being addressed by a title at all, correct or otherwise. A light touch nudged into her side as Ellana’s elbow bumped against her, and Wylaia cleared her throat. “Apology accepted. We will come and see Lady Pentaghast as soon as the Herald is well enough.”</p><p>Thrusting the box into Wylaia’s hands, the servant bowed, practically falling over her feet in her haste to get out of the building. As the door closed, Wylaia undid the clasp binding the box, and opened it to find several new herb samples that Adan had promised to give her.</p><p>“What was that,” asked Ellana, hesitantly, “that you called me then?”</p><p>“Hm? Oh, it’s what they’ve all been calling you. Herald of - Andraste? That’s it, I think. I’m sorry, there’s a lot of names to learn.”</p><p>Focused on her delivery as she was, Wylaia did not see the change in Ellana’s face. She only heard her say: “…Creators, I think I’m going to be sick.”</p><p>Darting to the side, Wylaia grabbed the empty washbowl and spun round, ready to hold it out - it wasn’t surprising that Ellana would be nauseous, really, with all that they’d been dosing her with. Or maybe she’d drunk the water too fast after all.</p><p>Then Wylaia’s eyes found Ellana’s face, and realised that the expression was one of horror. Cheeks flushing with embarrassment, she put the washbowl down on the ground.</p><p>“Why?” she asked, carefully. When Ellana said nothing, she pressed, “I thought that - Andraste - was an important figure in your religion.”</p><p>“My religion. <em>My</em> religion?” whispered Ellana, bringing her hands to her face. “I thought they were exaggerating when they told me you were from somewhere else. You really are, aren’t you? You have no idea. None at all.”</p><p>Guilt, heavy like a lump of ore, bloomed heavy in Wylaia’s gut. The woman’s voice had dropped to a hoarse whisper, and she didn’t think it was from thirst. “Then - would you explain? I will listen, happily.”</p><p>Ellana blinked her wide, pale eyes. “You mean that, don’t you?”</p><p>“Of course I do,” Wylaia replied, kneeling on the ground in front of the fire. “Why wouldn’t I?”</p><p>“My people do not trust easily. And so, often, we are not offered trust. Even by those who should be of our people.” Ellana took a deep breath. “Andraste is part of the sh- the human religion. She is no part of mine.”</p><p>The emphasis with which she said this, and the harsh edge in her voice, confused Wylaia. She settled further, crossing her legs, and began to sort the plants from the box she had discarded. “Leliana told me about the religion of this place,” she said, as much casting her thoughts aloud as anything. “And Solas told me that the markings on your face were a symbol of one of your Divine. But they are not related?”</p><p>“By the Dread Wolf, no! Why would you think such a thing?” Ellana asked, astonished.</p><p>“Where I come from,” Wylaia said, twirling a black flower on a long stem between her fingers, “there are many Divine. And many different legends about Them, and different ways of worshipping Them. There is much crossover. My people call the most powerful of the Divine by the name Auri-El, but others call Him Akatosh, or Alkosh. There are other examples like this. Some even share names across cultures. And when people move around, the worship becomes jumbled as well.”</p><p>“Oh,” said Ellana, softly. “That…sounds beautiful, in a way. But - do the parts that are of your people not get lost? If there are more people who worship Them in a different way, or…?”</p><p>Wylaia pursed her lips. “Sometimes. But I have always found comfort in learning what other people think of the Divine, and how they worship Them, and why. It makes me think about my own relationship with them. And often I find things from the worship of others that I wish to take for myself.”</p><p>“It sounds peaceful.”</p><p>“If only it were,” Wylaia laughed, wincing at the same time. “Wars and invasions and worse have been waged over religious worship.”</p><p>Which was, once again, not to even mention the Daedra.</p><p>With one hand, Ellana traced her cheekbone, and the deep green lines that swept along it. Somehow, the conversation seemed to be calming her, even if she looked no less troubled. “How are elves treated, where you come from?”</p><p>“It depends where you are. Where I’m from, we were almost all elves. Where I live...lived...it was - not great.”</p><p>Not that her experience had been particularly standard. The people of Skyrim had gone from looking at her with suspicion to heralding her as the bringer of all salvation within a matter of months.</p><p>“That girl, who delivered your herbs,” Ellana said, softly. “She is all but a slave. So are all of the elves who live within human lands. In cities, they are kept in places called alienages. They are slums where elves are thrown so that humans do not have to look at them.”</p><p>“The people here did not tell me that.”</p><p>“It won’t have occurred to them. It is just how the world is. I - I am not from a city. I am Dalish. My people do all that we can to keep the memory of our kind alive. There used to be more of us, you see. Many more. We used to have cities full of just as much life and joy as humans have. But it was all destroyed. And they will stop at nothing to take all we have left.”</p><p>“So,” Wylaia said after a tense pause, “naming you after one of their religious figures is…”</p><p>“Just another way of doing that.”</p><p>One by one, Wylaia picked up the plants and took them over to the table, laying them out ready to be sketched. She took a muslin cloth and laid it over them, careful not to disturb the more fragile of the flowers, so that the sun would not get to them too greatly. As she moved, Ellana watched her, a look of sadness pinching the corners of her eyes.</p><p>“When I first got to Skyrim,” Wylaia said, as she began to go through the chest with the clothes they’d left for the two of them, “the people looked at me like I was some dirt in their way. Some of them called me terrible things. Then, one day, I did something they didn’t expect. Something…impressive. And they stopped. They started to call me ‘my lady’ and bow and act like I was some kind of saviour.” She held out a thick, woolen cloak to Ellana. “And every time, I wished they would just call me those terrible things instead.”</p><p>Ellana clasped the cloak and smiled at her. “Would you come with me? Please? I don’t want to go on my own.”</p><p>“Of course. You don’t have to. And - you’re going to want some help getting through the crowds.”</p><p>“The crowds?”</p><p>—-</p><p>It was even worse than the first time Wylaia had left the building. Even with a cloak on and her hood up, people could see the magic crackling around Ellana’s hand, and they could work out that the two elven women were the ‘Herald’ and her healer. Wylaia wrapped her arm around the smaller woman’s shoulders and led her resolutely forward, placating the requests as they passed as best she could, doing everything to ensure they wouldn’t get surrounded like before.</p><p>As they turned, Wylaia saw Varric clomping his way over, hands raised above his head as he proclaimed, “My friends! Our Herald has important places to be. You wouldn’t take her from her duty to Andraste, now, would you? I know you’ve got questions, but please, let me answer them for you.”</p><p>Wylaia flashed him a grateful smile and led Ellana past the quartermaster’s tent, on towards the Chantry.</p><p>“I can’t let them do this to me,” Ellana whispered, as she reached up and gripped onto Wylaia’s hand.</p><p>Squeezing back, Wylaia assured her, “We won’t.”</p><p>The Chantry was all but empty when they entered, for which Wylaia was grateful. Ellana was shaking now, and she suspected it wasn’t from the cold, or even from her recent recovery. Really, they shouldn’t have brought her straight here - but stress from worry could be just as dangerous to healing as moving around could. Ellana needed to understand what was happening.</p><p>Wylaia remembered that feeling. It was why she’d followed Delphine for as long as she had. Until she <em>had</em> understood, and then it had been too much.</p><p>As they approached the door at the end of the long room, Wylaia began to hear voices. She felt Ellana tense at the same time, and they both paused to listen. It was not a voice that Wylaia recognised: a man, furious, demanding that ‘she’ should be imprisoned. It didn’t take a huge leap of logic to work out who he meant.</p><p>“...and as for the other one! A rogue mage? From Tevinter? What you are thinking I simply do not know -”</p><p>“Tevinter?” Ellana murmured, one eyebrow raised.</p><p>Wylaia rubbed her cheek. “It was their idea. I can hear Cassandra’s voice now, but who’s the one yelling?”</p><p>“Someone from their Chantry,” explained Ellana, with a sigh. “Chancellor something. I’ve already walked into one of his shouting matches.”</p><p>“It doesn’t seem like he’s going to stop. Are you ready?”</p><p>“I suppose I have no choice but to be.”</p><p>There were only three people in the room when they entered: Cassandra, who was leaning tiredly on the map table; Leliana, who had her arms crossed; and the Chancellor, who - as they walked in - pointed directly at them and loudly declared, “Guards! I want the both of them clapped in irons and taken to Val Royeaux immediately.”</p><p>Calmly, Cassandra said, “Disregard that, and leave us.”</p><p>The guards that Wylaia had felt pressing up against them turned at once, returning to their positions outside the door, and closing it quietly. The Chancellor’s face was bright red, the veins on his nose and cheeks looking as if they had exploded beneath his skin. He traded the same argument once more with Cassandra, who stepped forward to loom over him. </p><p>Into the tension between them, Ellana politely cleared her throat. “Excuse me. I apologise for interrupting your discussion, but I was summoned to speak to Seeker Cassandra.”</p><p>“You dare to address -” the Chancellor blustered, cutting off as Ellana continued speaking in the same soft, calm lilt.</p><p>“Do you have the strength to arrest both of us yourself, Chancellor? Against the wishes of the four of us?”</p><p>“Threats! I will not stand for this. The Chantry -”</p><p>“I would be extremely disappointed if you did anything to harm my healer,” Ellana replied with a smile, gesturing towards Wylaia. “You see, she has saved my life several times now.”</p><p>“Indeed,” added Leliana, returning the Dalish woman’s small smile. “I have been assured by both Solas and Apothecary Adan that without Wylaia’s expertise, the Herald would have been lost several times over.”</p><p>“Not to mention her intervention in the battle at the temple,” Cassandra added, with a pointed look. So someone had noticed her Shouting. That was going to be difficult to explain.</p><p>As their assault on the Chancellor turned to discussion of the Conclave, Wylaia stepped to the side and carefully watched Ellana’s reaction. The young woman was very good at hiding her reactions to things. Her face was placid, but not expressionless, and bore a strength made of cold, simmering anger.</p><p>“Here, Chancellor,” Wylaia said, when the man crumpled amidst the onslaught. “I will see you out.”</p><p>By the time Wylaia returned to the room, Cassandra and Leliana had moved from behind the table to stand before Ellana, who had her arms folded over her chest.</p><p>“We must act now,” Cassandra said, barely glancing to Wylaia as she re-entered. “With you at our side.”</p><p>As Wylaia closed the door gently behind her, she looked at Ellana. The woman had a small, sad smile on her face.</p><p>“Both of us?” Ellana asked lightly.</p><p>“I think that would be in all of our interests,” Leliana replied. “If our guest is willing.”</p><p>With a chuckle, Wylaia rubbed at her cheek. “Ellana is my only way home, so far as I know.” This was what they wanted her to say. Then she stepped forward and added what <em>she</em> wanted to say. “And I don’t intend to leave her without a friend, with what you’re going to do to her.”</p><p>Leliana returned her stare levelly. “You show great devotion to a woman you have only just met,” she said, her voice hard-edged.</p><p>“Where I come from,” Wylaia replied, “if you don’t make friends quickly, you die alone all the faster.”</p><p>“Then I am grateful the Herald has someone at her side.”</p><p>Though she wasn’t good enough at reading faces to trace the fine nuances of the change in Leliana’s expression, Wylaia had the feeling she had, once again, passed some sort of a test. And without killing a dragon, at that.</p><p>“As am I,” said Ellana, nodding and folding her hands together before her. “If you truly mean to restore order, I will help you. I will even accept that you continue to push this ridiculous notion that I am chosen by your Maker. But understand this: I will not uphold that lie myself. I will not claim faith in anything but the Creators.”</p><p>Cassandra exchanged a look with Leliana. “You will achieve nothing but making this harder for yourself.”</p><p>“So be it. You love your Maker, Cassandra? You believe in Him deeply, and trust His judgement no matter what. Then, if I am chosen as you claim, you must trust in me.” Her lips twisted into a sharp, cocky smirk. “Perhaps He thinks my blasphemy will be entertaining.”</p><p>To conceal the wild grin that lit her face, even as her eyebrows shot up, Wylaia rested her mouth on the underside of her hand. When they had entered, Cassandra and Leliana had dominated the room. Now, it was the small, white-haired elf who took everyone’s attention.</p><p>“We will see,” Cassandra said, picking up a gilt book from the table before her and leading them out of the room.</p><p>---</p><p>The crowds were still thick, so there was no chance for them to go anywhere other than back to the hut. Wylaia had hoped they would be able to go to Solas’s, so that he could check on Ellana as well - he understood the magic in her hand far more than Wylaia did - but his hut was on the opposite side of the village.</p><p>So they pushed through the crowds until they were safely back in the hut, trying to ignore the hushed chatter amidst the winter wind. Wylaia watched with a sigh as Ellana plodded over to the fire, not even bothering to unlace her boots, and sat down before it. She wrapped her arms around her knees and tucked her head down, her cloak fluttering as she began to shake.</p><p>As quietly as she could, Wylaia took off her own boots, and hung up her own cloak and coat, leaving herself in just the robes she’d taken from a dead man. She had never wanted to be a leader, but it had happened anyway, because she’d been willing to do anything to protect the friends she had made in the College at Winterhold. </p><p>One day she had been laughing with Brelyna as the Dunmer managed to turn her green with a spell gone wrong, and the next she had been watching as snow fell on Savos Aren’s corpse. Since the day she had become Arch-Mage, Wylaia had worn his robes as a reminder that sometimes, the only way to protect people was to accept responsibility. </p><p>It was just much easier to take responsibility for a small group. Far harder to take it for an entire world.</p><p>Kneeling alongside the crying elf, Wylaia wrapped her arms tightly around her and said nothing. There was, after all, nothing that she could really say. This was only the beginning.</p><p>Solas appeared not much later, after Wylaia had managed to get Ellana out of her damp clothing and settled in front of the rug more comfortably. Wylaia was sat on the bed when he entered, sketching the plants that Adan had sent her. She was struggling to capture the rich colour at the heart of one of them, a star of green flowers that glowed red at their centre and faded yellow at their tips. There were basic tints in her pack, but not the paints she had managed to put together after months of experimentation - they were back in her quarters in Winterhold.</p><p>“Good afternoon, Ellana,” Solas said, as she glanced up at him nervously. “How are you feeling?”</p><p>Ellana smiled, and Wylaia watched as she pulled herself more upright. “Better, thank you. And thank you for using my name.”</p><p>“I understand you caused something of a stir by insisting upon it,” he replied, kneeling in front of her. “A bold move, for a Dalish elf.”</p><p>“We only withdraw from people who aren’t worth our time,” Ellana stated in her icy, hard tone. “Fly straight and do not waver.”</p><p>A surprised expression, then a curving smile, bloomed on Solas’s face. “Strange that the First of a Dalish Clan should have studied the teachings of the Vir Tanadhal.”</p><p>Ellana smiled back. “A Keeper cannot keep that which they do not know, Solas.”</p><p>Chuckling silently to herself, Wylaia turned her attention back to her sketches, examining the flower in detail as Solas began to check Ellana over. Perhaps, given the strength of the pigment in its core, she would be able to use it to make some paints. Assuming that it was not particularly rare, of course. She had no way of knowing until she asked someone, since Adan had only shown her the ingredients in their processed form thus far. Putting names to faces, as it were, remained beyond her for all but elfroot.</p><p>After a while, Solas and Ellana finished talking, and he left her seemingly in a better mood than she had been before. Lunch was brought in by the same servant who had burst in on them this morning - she knocked this time, Wylaia noted. With deft grace, Ellana convinced the woman to sit with them and eat, under the pretence of wanting to question her about the Inquisition. And, of course, she had to eat - it would be rude not to, if everyone else was eating.</p><p>The woman’s name was Hilyen, and she was one of many general servants in the Inquisition. She had been a personal maid to one of the lesser nobles who had been at the Conclave, and joined out of lack of anywhere else to go. Within just a short meal, Ellana managed to learn from Hilyen how many elves there were, and how they were contained into one single building. It wasn’t even within the town itself, but something of a walk away - what had once been a farmhouse. It was better than an alienage, Hilyen said, but it was still not big enough, nor able to hold up against the worst storms.</p><p>Hilyen left later than Wylaia suspected she’d intended to, looking warmer and with more of a smile on her face. She was underdressed for the cold, as a lot of the Dunmer in Windhelm had been. Wylaia added a mental note to add sorting out better clothes for them to whatever intervention Ellana was currently planning. At least, she suspected that was what the pursed lips on the woman’s face meant.</p><p>Without saying anything, Wylaia picked up a pencil and a sheet of paper, and handed them to Ellana.</p><p>“I don’t know how much they’ll let me change,” Ellana said, wrapping slender fingers around it.</p><p>Wylaia smirked. “As much as they ask of you.”</p><p>---</p><p>They watched Haven turn into a hive of activity as the Inquisition became formal. Ravens were sent out, the edict was nailed to the front of the Chantry, and a steady stream of recruits began to turn up. For the most part, Ellana just stayed in and recovered. Until the next day, when Hilyen came to summon her to the Chantry. Although Wylaia offered to go with her, Ellana declined - but with a smile on her face, at least. Whatever reason she had for going alone, it was unlikely to be a bad one.</p><p>The day was a little balmier now the last of the storm had faded, so Wylaia left her cloak and just pulled her coat on over her robes, keeping the hood down. There was something she had wanted to do since the day they’d gotten to Haven, but there had been no opportunity.</p><p>“Excuse me,” she said to one of the ever-present admirers who was loitering around the cluster of huts where theirs rested.</p><p>The man’s eyes boggled in astonishment. “Y-yes, your ladyship?”</p><p>“Would you be able to tell me where Ser Lysette is posted?”</p><p>“Oh! Of course, your ladyship. Would you like me to show you?”</p><p>Wylaia shook her head. “Directions are enough. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to miss the Herald’s return.”</p><p>He nodded in fervent agreement, bringing his hands together as if in prayer. “Of course, of course. She’s just out the front, your ladyship, past the gates. Where the Commander and the Lady Seeker work.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Wylaia said, making her way there quickly, with what she hoped looked like purpose rather than being a hasty escape.</p><p>She spotted Lysette outside a tent some distance from the gates, watching over a group of soldiers as they trained. She was next to another soldier, who was in the midst of turning away from her in a huff, evidently exasperated with something. At least, Wylaia thought to herself, it didn’t look like Cassandra had done anything too terrible to her.</p><p>Clearing her throat as she approached, Wylaia caught the woman’s glance. “Do you have a moment?” she called, not going too close.</p><p>Lysette nodded, murmured something to her companion, and walked over. Her heavy armour clinked as she moved, but she fell into step with Wylaia silently otherwise, as they walked a little way along the path until they were alone. </p><p>“I just wanted to make sure that you hadn’t gotten into any trouble,” Wylaia said, when they were far enough. “For disobeying orders.”</p><p>“After what you did to save the Herald? No. They entirely forgot about me, and that you weren’t meant to be there.”</p><p>Wylaia sighed in relief. “Oh. Good.”</p><p>“It was...impressive, what you did,” Lysette said, pointedly.</p><p>“A spell from my homeland. Some of my teachers taught me it. It’s quite rare, but very useful.”</p><p>Lysette glanced at her. “It saved the Herald’s life. Where is it that you are from?”</p><p>“I’d...prefer not to say,” Wylaia said quietly, rubbing at her cheek.</p><p>She had never liked lying, but she’d been taken in by enough liars to spot how they did it. Silus had been the worst of them, and he’d lied by telling the truth. He really had wanted to start a museum, and to acknowledge his family’s legacy. He’d just left out the ways in which he meant to do those things - and how far he’d meant to go.</p><p>Fortunately, Lysette either bought the half-truth or didn’t care to challenge it. “Either way,” she said, stopping and turning to face Wylaia, “I am glad that she has you by her side.”</p><p>Wylaia smiled, and held out her hand for Lysette to shake. The Templar’s grip was firm, but made her palm tingle as if there were a spell ready on her fingertips. “Thank you. For protecting me, so that I could look after her.”</p><p>By the Nine, she missed Lydia. Lydia had the same expression - the same mixture of sternness with a wry, weary tinge. They even looked a little similar, she realised, as Lysette nodded and walked back to her post. She wondered how Lydia was. They hadn’t been together, when she’d found the gate. She was back at the house that they’d bought for her, after too many weeks of Lydia sleeping on the floor in her College quarters.</p><p>No, she didn’t miss everyone bowing and scraping. Even as ‘the Herald’s healer’, and looking as strange as she did, being around the people in Haven was nowhere near as bad. They actually respected her for something she’d done - not something that Fate and happenstance had made her into. No one here expected her to save the world. She didn’t miss that for a moment.</p><p>But she did miss her friends. Her colleagues at the College. Sometimes, she just missed being somewhere familiar.</p><p>The hurt began to swell in her like an ache, so Wylaia did what she often did to help herself calm down: she walked around the lands outside the town hunting for herbs. There was elfroot, but she also discovered a patch of mushrooms that she took some samples from. They were patterned on the top and pale on the stems, like Namira’s rot, so she packed them away into her satchel to show Adan later.</p><p>As she snapped her fifth elfroot branch, she remembered the promise she’d been made - that she could have her weapons back if Ellana woke up. This. This was good. It was something to do, something to distract her, something to keep her focused so that she could be there for Ellana. Before she’d finished thinking, her feet were already carrying her back towards the Chantry.</p><p>She stopped only to show the mushrooms to Adan, who told her that they weren’t fully poisonous, but had a tendency to give a troubled stomach if not cooked enough. Imp stool was like that - if you just used it raw, it was a poison; if you boiled it and used the broth, it would cause paralysis; but if you dried it out and ground it down, it would help for healing.</p><p>By the time she made it to Leliana’s tent, it was attended again, whatever meeting Ellana had been summoned to evidently having finished.</p><p>“I’m sorry to interrupt you,” Wylaia said, leaning around the side of the tent. “Do you have a moment?”</p><p>With a thin smile, Leliana nodded, and gestured for her to come in. “What can I do for you?”</p><p>“I believe you have some things of mine.”</p><p>“Ah, yes,” Leliana said, beckoning her to follow as she walked back towards the Chantry. “Come this way. We locked them up, since several of them appeared to be magically inclined.”</p><p>Wylaia nodded. “Several are enchanted. Some are - I suppose you’d call them artifacts.”</p><p>“Tell me about the bow?”</p><p>“It’s called a Stahlrim bow. They’re made in a village called Skaal, on an island near Skyrim, though - Gods, it was -”</p><p>She trailed off, suddenly remembering holding a book heavier than it should have been, the sight of a crackling green sky, the voice of Miraak ringing in her ears. It had been like that on the island, too, when night had fallen. Frea had said it was the stones’ effect, as they brought Miraak’s power closer to Skyrim.</p><p>Damnit. Leliana was staring at her.</p><p>“...so cold there, the sea air was awful.” The spymistress hadn’t bought it, but Wylaia continued anyway. “It’s actually part of Morrowind. A different kingdom. The bow’s named for the rock it comes from - they call it enchanted ice. That’s why it’s cold to the touch.” Wylaia smiled, remembering the blacksmith’s lecture when she’d bought it. He’d taken such pride in his work, even after everything that had happened there. “It takes frost enchantments very well, as a result. Natural affinity.”</p><p>“It is on the heavy side,” Leliana noted, as she led Wylaia through to a side room in the Chantry. It was a bedchamber - likely Leliana’s own, she realised.</p><p>Wylaia nodded. “It took some getting used to. I’d been using an elven one for a long time, which was a good deal lighter. But it’s worth the arm ache.” As Leliana began to unlock a chest, she asked, “You’re a hunter yourself?”</p><p>“In a manner of speaking,” Leliana said, lifting the lid. “I prefer a lighter bow, however. But yours is truly beautiful. As is the sword.”</p><p>It wasn’t surprising that the last words were particularly pointed - the sword in question had started pouring light into the room as soon as Leliana had removed it from the chest. They’d unbound it, Wylaia noticed, presumably to inspect it. She reached out and took the longsword, wincing at the daylight that spilled from its crosspiece.</p><p>“This would be one of the ones that is more an artifact,” Wylaia explained, placing it down and taking the other items - her quiver, bow, and the thin daggers she used for herbalism - as Leliana handed them over. “It is called Dawnbreaker. It is...”</p><p>Leliana’s hand wrapped around the black and silver scabbard of a pointed dagger, the Daedric symbol for oht, Oblivion, gleaming on its side. Swallowing, Wylaia realised she needed a distraction, and quickly. So she trailed off, and changed her speech to a question, hoping it would be as awkward in Thedas as it was back home.</p><p>“Do you have necromancy here?”</p><p>Raising an eyebrow, Leliana nodded. “We do.” She handed the dagger over, and Wylaia put it calmly with the others. “Though I would not ask such a thing in polite company.”</p><p>Wylaia nodded, and began to wrap the sword back up. “Dawnbreaker is particularly effective against necromantic creatures. They cannot bear its light, and it has a chance to make them explode. I am, ah - I have no real skill in using it. Not at all. But it is useful in a pinch.”</p><p>“Do you travel to many places infested with the undead?” Leliana asked, folding her arms over her chest and watching Wylaia intently. “Perhaps to gather ingredients?”</p><p>“You would actually be surprised how useful bone meal is, though it’s best not to tell anyone you’re using it. Tends to make them turn their noses up. Ah - Skyrim has seen many wars, and there are a lot of tombs. I spent some time searching for historical artifacts, books and the like. It’s impossible to go into anything underground without coming across a draugr or two.”</p><p>With Dawnbreaker wrapped, she could see enough to get her quiver strapped on properly, and slip her harvesting daggers back into the loops on her belt. As Leliana continued to watch, Wylaia took her time checking the string on her bow, tutting at how it had begun to fray even though it had been properly stored.</p><p>“Well,” Leliana said, as Wylaia began to reattach the string just so that she could strap the bow over her quiver, “perhaps sometime we will try a target or two, together. I am interested to see what you can do.”</p><p>Wylaia watched her turn. “I’m sure you are.”</p><p>She didn’t pick up the black and silver dagger until Leliana’s footsteps had faded from her hearing.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you so much for reading &lt;3</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. A Visit From Home</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Now armed once more, Wylaia goes with Ellana to run some errands. On their way to retrieve Master Taigen's notes, they encounter something unexpected - and everything Wylaia understands about Thedas changes.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you all for your comments on the last chapter! It's weird to me how regular a part of my week writing &amp; uploading this is now - even after just a month. Thank you for making this so much fun.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Wylaia had once told Lydia that, when she died, she wanted a particular phrase engraved on her headstone.</p>
<p>
  <em>She never meant for any of it to happen.</em>
</p>
<p>She had gathered the pieces of Mehrunes’ Razor for Silus because she had genuinely believed that he had wanted to archive them. She’d always thought too much of history ignored the terrible things. That people always painted themselves as victors, and never the complicated sometimes-hero sometimes-villain that they truly were. Silus’s museum seemed like a good way to counter that. 'Here I am, and here are the people I come from.'</p>
<p>But the fervour he’d spoken with on the cold, snowy night that she’d finally made it back to the museum had scared her. He’d left instantly, and Wylaia had been certain that he would freeze to death. Or worse, he wouldn’t, and then it would be her fault that she’d let someone remake the weapon named for Daedric Prince of destruction itself. Legend said that the blade could instantly kill its victims; it wasn’t named the Dagger of the Final Wounds for no reason.</p>
<p>Wylaia had slept in Silus’s bed, drunk his mead and eaten his food, and then run after him the next day. She’d been too late. He was already there, already preparing, and when she’d hurled herself at him in an attempt to force him away from the altar, her hand had landed on its surface. A voice had entered her mind. She had never liked that feeling. At least Hermaeus Mora and Meridia had transported her to them to speak - in a sense, anyway. Dagon had slithered into her mind and crowed over her new position as his champion, then sent minions to try and kill her.</p>
<p>When they’d shut themselves in his temple to keep from freezing in the storm, Lydia had placed a hand on Wylaia’s arm as she’d moved to heal the warrior’s wounds.</p>
<p>“You are too curious,” she had said, in a tone heavy with judgement. “It will destroy you.”</p>
<p>She’d said the same a year later, when Wylaia had opened the first black book in Solstheim, and it had been just as true then as it had been every moment of Wylaia’s life. She was too curious, and one day, that curiosity would destroy her. Perhaps it already had: she should never have gone near that Oblivion Gate in the first place. She’d had enough trips to Oblivion to last ten lifetimes. For Kynareth’s sake, she wasn’t a warrior, or a hero - she was an alchemist.</p>
<p>At least, that was what she wanted to be. Maybe Thedas was a chance to do that. Maybe she didn’t have to go back at all, and that was okay.</p>
<p>When she stepped out of the Chantry, feeling much safer with her weapons strapped to her back, Wylaia found herself nonetheless uncomfortable. She was not made for staying in the same building, day after day. She needed to go…<em>somewhere.</em> It didn’t matter where. Just out. She’d looked at the map when Cassandra and Leliana had summoned Ellana, and felt her breath catch at the sight of so many places she didn’t know. So many places to explore.</p>
<p>Her feet itched; she walked back towards their hut regardless, because Ellana was more important than her wanderlust. But she had barely turned the corner into the dead-end street when Ellana ran up to her, cheeks flushed with a mixture of breathlessness and the cold day.</p>
<p>“I have to go to the Hinterlands. There’s a Chantry Mother they want.” The Dalish woman made little attempt to add weight to the title, which somehow did more than disdain ever could. “But I want to find something for Adan first.”</p>
<p>Wylaia tilted her head to the side. “Does he need something?”</p>
<p>“Has he mentioned Master Taigen?”</p>
<p>“No. Should he have?”</p>
<p>Ellana sighed, and pushed her hair out of her face. “Maybe. He died at the Conclave.”</p>
<p>“Oh,” said Wylaia, feeling a sudden rush of guilt. Should she have asked him? They’d spent so much time talking about treatments and alchemy that she hadn’t thought to ask if Adan was actually okay. “I didn’t know.”</p>
<p>“Master Taigen was working on something special. He had a house not far outside the village.” Her pale eyes were sparkling now; she had a plan. “I thought that we could go find them.”</p>
<p>Wylaia frowned. “Are you sure you’re feeling up to it?”</p>
<p>Placing her hands on Wylaia’s arms, Ellana looked up at her imploringly. “If I do not get out of here soon,” she said, almost plaintively, “I think I will go completely mad. Please. I need to be out there again. In the real world.”</p>
<p>It was a strange turn of phrase, but it made the itch in Wylaia’s feet reassert itself. “If you feel even slightly worse, we come straight home.”</p>
<p>“Of course!”</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>“I talked to some of the other elves,” Ellana said, as they picked their way through the snow, which was deceptively thick in places. “Most of them are like Hilyen - they worked for the people who were at the Conclave. The rest are refugees. And almost all of them are servants, apart from the few who work for Leliana.”</p>
<p>Motioning for Ellana to pause, Wylaia knelt down and sliced a few stalks from an elfroot plant, careful to leave enough for it to keep growing. “Do the scouts live any better?”</p>
<p>“No.” Shaking her head, Ellana sighed. “I had thought things would be better than this. The Inquisition are kind enough to me.”</p>
<p>“But they need you,” Wylaia said, a little more bitterly than she’d intended.</p>
<p>Ellana raised an eyebrow. “Yes, I think that is it. Come on. Adan said the hut was just over this way.”</p>
<p>Tucking the leaves carefully into her pouch, Wylaia followed after her. Ellana was walking much better, she noticed, though she was still tending to lean a little more than she ought on the staff she carried. It was not too dissimilar to the staves Wylaia had found in Skyrim - taller than Ellana, with a curved wooden shaft that curled around at the top. As she walked, the steel-capped bottom sank into the snow. It made a faint crunching sound that - no. Wait. It wasn’t Ellana’s staff at all.</p>
<p>Taking two quick steps forward to catch up with her, Wylaia grabbed Ellana by the shoulder and brought a finger to her lips. As they crouched down, Wylaia drew her bow, bad string and all, and notched an arrow. The crunching sound she had mistaken for Ellana’s footsteps continued. She could make out four separate sources working over one another; either two people, or a four-footed animal. The sound seemed too loud to be the latter, but they were too far from the village now for it to be someone from Haven. She couldn’t even see the gates anymore.</p>
<p>They were close to some trees, so - praying that Ellana was small enough to be quiet - Wylaia began circling her way round. The sound was coming from the other side, and if there was one thing she’d learned from Skyrim, it was never to let her opponent get too close to her. In the back of her throat, the force of the dragon souls within her trembled, making the surface of her tongue prickle with anticipation. She didn’t want to Shout in front of Ellana, but if no one was supposed to be out here, then what was ahead of them couldn’t be good.</p>
<p>Once they had made a good flank, Wylaia paused again, listening for the footsteps. She could hear a distant crackling - was it a fire? Some kind of shock magic?</p>
<p>Then Ellana let out a gasp and grabbed at her left hand, curling it against her in an attempt to try and stifle the sound. The footsteps that Wylaia had heard became louder, closer - she moved to stand in front of Ellana and pulled her bow back as far as it would go, feeling the frost enchantment brush cold against her cheek. She tried to remember all of the kinds of demon that she had seen here in Thedas - which of them could possibly be making that sound? Was it one of the terror demons? Or something else?</p>
<p>The figure that stepped around the corner never crossed her mind as a possibility.</p>
<p>“Ellana,” Wylaia said, her voice choking in her throat. “You need to run. Now. You need to run and get help.”</p>
<p>Because there was no mistaking the tall figure wreathed in ethereal armour of gold and white - the same armour she could call upon herself with a single Shout - nor the even taller figure that lumbered in behind him, with its fetid stench and fish-like head on a giant’s body.</p>
<p>“I had thought you useless, Dragonborn,” remarked Miraak, as he came to a stop several feet before them. “And yet, to have led me to a place such as this…perhaps there was a reason Fate brought you to me after all.”</p>
<p>Behind her, Wylaia felt Ellana crumple to her knees. Wylaia kept her arms still even though her muscles were straining to hold the bow pulled, the arrow aimed not at Miraak, but at the lurker beside him. She knew she could kill those, at least.</p>
<p>“This place is worth little to you, Miraak. Or your Master. Go back to Skyrim and have your fill of the souls there.”</p>
<p>Though it was impossible to tell if Miraak was smiling behind his tentacled mask, there was no mistaking his rich, cackling laughter. “Useful you may be, but foolish you remain. This place has far more to offer me than Skyrim ever did. A pity you will not be around to see it.”</p>
<p>“Miraak!” Wylaia yelled, but he was already moving away - and the lurker was coming towards them. Turning, she looked at Ellana, who was still crumpled in pain, then back at the approaching lurker. Drawing a deep breath, Wylaia fired her shot, and Shouted: “Fus ro dah!”</p>
<p>But though she aimed the frost-wreathed arrow at the creature of Apocrypha, she did not make it the target of her Shout. That she turned upon Ellana, sending the unsuspecting elf flying into the distant trees, her body crumpling out of sight. There was every chance the fall had injured her, but even more of a chance that the lurker would kill her in the blink of an eye. Beginning to run, Wylaia fired off another shot, and then another - but the third made the string of her bow snap, the frayed section giving in to the pressure.</p>
<p>Cursing, Wylaia threw the bow aside. She clapped her hands together, then pulled them apart, summoning a flame atronach to serve as a distraction. She ran further, trying with every step to draw the lurker away from Ellana, and began to gather spikes of ice in her hands. They left frost on her gloves as she hurled them, each slamming into the side of the lurker and leaving it weaker. They didn’t hurt it as much as she would’ve liked, but it was safer than getting any closer.</p>
<p>She was so focused on kiting it away from Ellana that she failed to notice the moment it reared itself back, preparing to spit - she tried to dive aside at the last second, but the acid still splattered across the side of her body, leaving her gasping in agony. She threw out another ice spike, and did what she could to keep running, before the acid’s grip ran its course and she was safe to heal the burns that streaked down her left side. Thank Mara she was wearing her robes, or she would have run out of magicka already.</p>
<p>The lurker caught up on her atronach then, and began hurling its fists down upon it. The spit had slowed Wylaia down enough that she had no choice but to summon a ward in one hand and start spilling flame forth with the other when it turned next towards her. It had almost caught up when it stumbled, frost enveloping its entire body, and then began to topple. Wylaia leapt out of the way, but needn’t had done - it shattered upon the ground, scattering into dozens of pieces.</p>
<p>Behind it, one frosted hand outstretched, the other clutched to her chest, was Ellana.</p>
<p>“We have to close the rift,” she called, eyes darting to the remains of the lurker.</p>
<p>Wylaia nodded, and ran over to Ellana’s side, using the last of her magicka to repair the scrapes and bruises from landing after the Shout. They turned and weaved through the branches, finding the rift crackling in a clearing that led to an abandoned building - but nothing more.</p>
<p>“Do it,” Wylaia said, feeling the clench of souls return to her throat. “I will keep them away.”</p>
<p>She positioned herself in front of Ellana again, poised to defend against whatever would come through the rift - the rift that looked like the sky in Oblivion, that looked like the Gate she’d taken here, that Miraak must have taken here. The rift that meant she had damned this world by coming here, just as badly as she’d damned Skyrim by leaving.</p>
<p>The rift that, a few moments later, Ellana had closed.</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>In a tense silence, Ellana waited as Wylaia carefully covered the lurker’s frozen and shattered body with enough snow to conceal it. She scooped the atronach’s remains into a pouch and concealed the charred smudge that was left, and picked up her discarded bow. Then, without needing to discuss it, she and Ellana walked through into the hut and closed the door behind them.</p>
<p>Though it looked to have been abandoned for a week or two, which made sense given the occupant’s demise, the building was not in bad condition. There was a bed, which Ellana sat on with a heavy sigh, and a fireplace which Wylaia knelt before as she took off her gloves, checking her arm for the rest of the acid burns. The enchantments on her clothing had kept it from doing too much damage, either to them or to her skin, but the left side of her face felt taught with newly healed skin.</p>
<p>“Wylaia,” Ellana said quietly.</p>
<p>She ignored the gentle voice, and instead began rooting through her satchel. Most of her bow strings were in her pack, but sometimes she kept one in the satchel, and the Gods knew that she’d need it if another lurker came. Archery was the best tactic with them, far better than magic, which they were resistant to, and far better than any melee weapon - unless you were Lydia, who had the nimbleness to get out of their tentacles and the strength to hold up against their blows -</p>
<p>“Wylaia.”</p>
<p>Still Wylaia ignored her, hurling the satchel down in anger when there was no string to be found, and turning back to examine the bow. Perhaps it wasn’t too broken. Perhaps she could -</p>
<p>A hand pressed on the side of her face, small and cold and brimming with static. “Be still. Breathe.” Another hand gently lifted the bow from her grasp.</p>
<p>She noticed the tears only as they spilled out onto Ellana’s fingertips, and the shaking of her hands only when the Dalish woman took them in hers, kneeling in front of her with a stillness that seemed to oppose all of reality. Miraak was here. In Thedas. He had followed her here - but how? Hermaeus Mora would not have allowed him this freedom, not when he had expended so much trying to get her to turn on Miraak in Solstheim.</p>
<p>“Keep breathing, Wylaia. In and out. You can do it.”</p>
<p>Her whole body was shaking now. She should never have opened the books. She shouldn’t have opened the first, she shouldn’t have opened the second, she should never have even gone to Solstheim. So she’d almost died to a pair of assassins - that should’ve been the end of it. She should have just gone to fulfil her destiny like Delphine had wanted and never, ever learned the name of the First Dragonborn, the one who had managed to escape that same destiny, at the cost of enslaving himself to a Daedra.</p>
<p>“You are safe, lethallan. The rift is closed, and I am here. I will not let them hurt you again.”</p>
<p>Wylaia pulled her knees up to her chest, her hands away from Ellana’s, the motion sending the Dalish woman backwards a little. Splaying her palms over her tear stained face, Wylaia shook her head fiercely. “You shouldn’t. I should go. I should go back through the Gate to where I belong.”</p>
<p>“If you do that,” Ellana said, her voice as soft and gentle as it had been since they’d entered, “I will lose my friend. A friend who has saved me yet another time.”</p>
<p>“If I stay,” Wylaia said, “he will kill so many people.”</p>
<p>“Who?”</p>
<p>Wylaia let out a breath that contained a low, keening sound. “Miraak.”</p>
<p>“The man in the glowing armour?”</p>
<p>“You saw him?”</p>
<p>“Just. You blew me into a snow dune, and I got to my feet in time to see him. He knew you, didn’t he? He’s from your land?”</p>
<p>Face still concealed behind her hands, Wylaia nodded. “He is…the first Dragonborn. Someone born with the blood of dragons, who has the ability to use their Voice, and consume their souls.”</p>
<p>“He…called you Dragonborn,” Ellana said, hesitation slipping in. “That spell you cast, just then - and before, at the top of the mountain…”</p>
<p>“We call them Shouts. Each is made of three words, each word empowered by the soul of a dragon, a soul that they - that we - absorb after we kill them.”</p>
<p>Ellana sat down properly, crossing her feet. Even though she couldn’t see her, Wylaia could feel her gaze. When she spoke, it wasn’t with confusion, but wonder. “How many dragons have you killed?”</p>
<p>“I…lost count a while ago,” Wylaia admitted, scraping her hands down her face to wipe away the tears. Each breath was beginning to feel a little easier, each word spoken a weight off her chest. “I could work it out, from the number of words I’ve learned, but…”</p>
<p>“This is the thing you did, isn’t it? The thing they didn’t expect.”</p>
<p>Wylaia bit her lip, then nodded. “The dragon was going to kill everyone in the town. I’d just gone there to carry a message, to warn them dragons were attacking. Then it came. I couldn’t let them fight it on their own. And when it died, it turned into light, and the light -”</p>
<p>Rather than finishing the sentence, Wylaia touched her hand to her throat, feeling the pules of the souls there. She hadn’t lied; she really had lost count of how many there were, crushed together in her own being. What sort of mortal could carry the souls of dozens of dragons, and still remain mortal at all? Had there ever been any chance of a normal life, for her?</p>
<p>Moving closer, Ellana gently placed her hand - her left hand, the pale skin still crackling with light - over the hand pressed to Wylaia’s throat. “If you need to go, then I will help you. But Wylaia, do you really think they would leave Thedas, just because you went? We are in the Dragon Age, after all.”</p>
<p>“We…what?”</p>
<p>“The Chantry names each century or so, based on something significant that happens then. Or...something they consider significant.” She wrinkled her nose. “Everyone thought dragons were extinct until just before the start of this age.”</p>
<p>Wylaia laughed. She couldn’t help it - it was too perfect. When she managed to get the half-laughter, half-sobs under control, she explained, “The same thing happened at home. No one had seen the dragons until a few years ago. They were just myths and skeletons littering the land.”</p>
<p>“Was that when you discovered what you were?”</p>
<p>“Yes. First a dragon attacked the town I was being executed in.” When Ellana’s face contorted, Wylaia waved a hand. “Don’t, the story is embarrassing. The dragon saved my life, to be honest.”</p>
<p>With a small chuckle of her own, Ellana said, “I was saved by a woman from another world, lethallan. I can hardly comment.”</p>
<p>Wylaia wiped her hands on her robes and held them out to take Ellana’s. Her breathing had calmed now, and her chest hardly felt tight at all, though the knowledge - that more things had come through from Skyrim than just her - had shifted to be a dead weight in her gut. They sat there quietly in front of the cold fireplace, Ellana’s thumb gently rubbing circles over the back of Wylaia’s hand.</p>
<p>Distantly, Wylaia realised that she had not felt this safe with someone since her grandmother. Even Lydia hadn’t - Lydia had been tied to the life she’d never asked for, and refused to ever stop calling her ‘my Thane’ or ‘my lady’. Lydia had been her friend, but she could never forget that Lydia was also her servant, that whenever they went back to Whiterun, Lydia would collect her pay from the Jarl.</p>
<p>Despite everything, she had managed to find a friend.</p>
<p>So eventually, Wylaia managed to ask the one question she didn’t want to know the answer to. “What do we do now?”</p>
<p>“We look for Master Taigen’s notes,” Ellana said, lofting her head to glance around the house, “and then we take them to Adan.”</p>
<p>“Just like that? We don’t tell anyone...anything?”</p>
<p>“Just like that. The she- the Inquisition don’t trust us yet, Wylaia. We need them. We can’t protect each other alone. But they need to trust us, and - and we need to trust them too.” Her face tensed at the end; she clearly found the idea distasteful. “Especially since I’m leaving in a day or two.”</p>
<p>Wylaia nodded. Then, a moment later, her lips parted. “You didn’t say we. About leaving.”</p>
<p>“No,” Ellana agreed, squeezing Wylaia’s hands. “Because I <em>have </em>to go, but if we both go, no one will help Hilyen and the other elves. I want to do it myself, but -”</p>
<p>“If you don’t go, we lose the power we’ll need to help them.”</p>
<p>“Exactly.”</p>
<p>“I’ll see what I can do to get their farmhouse fixed up. I’m not too bad with a forge, I can make nails and the like, useful things, so we won’t need the smith to do it. And anyone can chop wood. We could have some of them come here, too, so there’s more room. It isn’t as if Master Taigen is using it, anymore.”</p>
<p>Ellana laughed again, a smile lighting up her face. “Is there anything you can’t do?”</p>
<p>“I’m terrible at taking care of horses. My people are attuned to animals, but horses seem to hate me no matter what.”</p>
<p>“That’s okay,” Ellana said, patting her on the arm and getting up. “Horses are a shem mount, anyway. One day, I’ll take you into the woods and we’ll find you a halla.”</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>They made sure that the bodies were well hidden before they went back, using frost magic to create so strong an encasement of ice around the buried corpse of the lurker that it would take a concerted effort to get through it. Covered with snow, it looked perfectly normal. Just a dune that she and Ellana had wandered past with their light-footed steps, their prints barely visible in the sparkling blanket of white.</p>
<p>When they reached Haven, Ellana carefully distracted Wylaia from her thoughts with errands. They returned Taigen’s notes to Adan, whose face lit up with a joy that Wylaia had not yet seen - he began to pour over them straight away, but insisted Wylaia come back the next day to discuss what he’d found. From there they went to see Solas and Varric, to ask them to begin packing for the journey to the Hinterlands. Cassandra would be going too, Ellana explained, but she was already preparing.</p>
<p>They had lunch in the tavern, which was a very different experience to the meals Wylaia had taken there previously - when eating with the Herald of Andraste, you were simultaneously watched intently, and left pointedly alone. It made Ellana go quiet - most of the people in the tavern were human - so, with a smile, Wylaia resigned herself to asking Ellana about the Dalish pantheon until she was on the edge of her chair with interest.</p>
<p>Something that, she noticed, the people watching them listened to. Good. Let them see that Ellana was not going to give up who she was just to be who they wanted.</p>
<p>Their next trip was to Harritt, the smith, whose prices for armour were apparently far better than Seggrit’s. Even still, it was more money than Ellana had. Wylaia could have paid it in an instant if she’d had any of her money, but Lydia had always insisted that it was a housecarl’s job to carry their liege’s funds. Wylaia had some, of course, but it wasn’t as much as Ellana needed. But what she did have was the ability to wield a smith’s hammer.</p>
<p>They left with the agreement that Wylaia would be there at dawn the next day, and the promise that a suit of armour would be made to the Herald’s measurements in return for the assistance. Ellana was grinning as they left; Harritt’s parting remark had been: “Strange skill for a healer to have, but we’ll have the measure of you in the morn.”</p>
<p>Still, it felt good to be able to do something to help. Hard work had always helped her take her mind off of things. Perhaps she could talk Harritt into helping her build an enchanting table. She had a rudimentary idea of how to inlay the surface so that it conducted magic well, and if she could enchant things, she’d be even more help - she’d always been better at enchanting than smithing. Endurance was her thing, not strength.</p>
<p>After that they went to meet the Quartermaster, who seemed to not be anywhere near as bad as people had made out. Ellana had helped her with a requisition for the troops, and seemed inclined to entertain the request for some lumber for building. It probably helped that Ellana had made the request, and Wylaia had happened to mention that it would improve the Inquisition’s food production - which was true. If the people making it were better treated, they’d be able to work harder. Gods only knew how much they were struggling right now.</p>
<p>By the time they were done it was well into the afternoon, and Wylaia wanted nothing more to sleep. But there was also the gnawing sense that Ellana was going to be gone soon, and she would be alone - so instead, they spent the rest of the day in front of the fire, trading legends that they’d been told as a child.</p>
<p>When Wylaia slept, she dreamt of a crackling green sky.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you everyone for reading &lt;3</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. To Work, Then</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Wylaia begins her first day working with Harritt in the smithy, Ellana leaves for the Hinterlands, and the day ends with a very different kind of dinner to that which most of Haven have.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hello, friends! Just a quick note that this chapter involves more discussion of fantastical racism, specifically that against elves (both in Skyrim and Thedas). As part of this, the first section involves Wylaia recalling being called a word that is used in our world as hate speech against Indigenous peoples (the s- word). If you would be more comfortable skipping that, go to the first jump, where the next section begins "A twitch occurred in the smith's vibrant moustache".</p>
<p>I have done an embarrassing amount of research about leatherworking, and yet I'm sure I have still gotten several details about the process of boiling leather wrong. Fortunately, Thedas doesn't exist, so whatever I say is fine. Right?!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The pre-dawn light streaked through the window, spilling onto Ellana’s face as she lay curled in the blankets. Where it hit the thin threads of the tattoo that spread over her forehead, it made the emerald green shine with gold. Wylaia had two thoughts: the first was that her friend was beautiful, and the second was to wonder what they had used to make the tattoo dyes. Ellana had told her that it was a sacred ritual for her people, and that she had been training in conducting it - before she’d been sent to the Conclave, that is.</p>
<p>Wylaia’s third thought, as she untangled herself from her blankets in front of the ebbing fire, was that it was probably a good thing that Ellana was beautiful. If she was going to be the face of this Inquisition, she would have had a much harder time otherwise. It was a grim thought; a cruel thought. But Wylaia had seen the faces of people as they looked at her, taking in her decidedly Bosmer appearance. Her brown skin had a green tone to it that made it stand out from humankind, but what damned her was her eyes. In Skyrim, they had taken to calling her ‘exotic’. Wylaia hated the word. It was only a few steps away from what the Altmer she’d met in Cyrodiil had called her. Woodland savage.</p>
<p>No - she did not want to start her day with thoughts like this. She would not let the fear still clutching in her gut turn her bitter. The people that had called her those things were ignorant and terrible, but she did not want them to live in her mind as well as in her home.</p>
<p>After she had washed, Wylaia stepped out into the cold, and knelt for a moment in the small patch of snow that was behind their hut. One of the elfroot plants she had clipped was growing there. Eyes closed, Wylaia pressed thumb and finger over one of the remaining leaves. The furred, velvety surface was both rough and soft against her skin.</p>
<p>“We are who we are,” she murmured, her voice barely audible. “We taste the earth and feel your steps over us. We were the land of green singing before the bones were set. Before the before-and-after.”</p>
<p>It wasn’t a prayer, per se, but Wylaia had never put much stock in the limits of religious stricture. She felt what she felt and expressed it however seemed right. She’d read <em>The Green Singing</em> when she was a child, and it had stuck with her. There was a peace in positioning herself within everything and nothing. Sometimes that seemed wild to her - perhaps even some would consider it insanity. But to Wylaia, some things just made sense in her gut.</p>
<p>Like, for example, that she’d be late to help Harritt if she spent too much longer in prayer.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>A twitch occurred in the smith’s vibrant moustache. He had not, Wylaia thought, expected her to turn up. His eyes flickered, and his brows raised. No, he hadn’t expected that, and he definitely hadn’t expected her to have her own leather apron (she’d known better than to wear her robes for this).</p>
<p>“Now where does a healer get gear like that?”</p>
<p>Wylaia curled her lips into a smile. “The first time you pick blisterwort without some sort of cover is also the last. It’s not called that for no reason. Not to mention any kind of corpse dissection. Blood is terrible to get out of cotton.”</p>
<p>“Aye,” Harritt said, still eyeing her suspiciously. “That it is. Well, come along then. Let’s see what you can do.”</p>
<p>“Leather or steel?”</p>
<p>“It’s leather the Herald wants, if I’m not mistaken. Let’s see how you do with that. Might even have you make her gear yourself, if you’ve a dab hand.”</p>
<p>With that, he turned back to preparing the forge for the day. It was either a sign that he thought she’d be terrible, or a gesture of trust. Given the juxtaposition of his gruff dismissal and the gleam in his eyes, it could well be both.</p>
<p>Wylaia had learned most of what she knew about smithing from Adrianne Avenicci, in Whiterun. The first few weeks after she’d killed the dragon outside the town, Wylaia hadn’t known what to do with herself - or the housecarl she’d been assigned out of nowhere. To Lydia’s disgust, she had eschewed fighting more dragons, and instead wandered round the town seeing who she could help.</p>
<p>After the incident with the Alik’r, Wylaia had ended up in the smithy for arrows. She was so shaken by the sight of the Alik’r taking the Redguard woman away that she’d barely paid attention to the conversation with Adrianne - and the next thing she knew, she’d asked if the smith needed any help, and suddenly she was being handed everything you needed to make a crude dagger.</p>
<p>Her first attempt had been shameful, even with Adrianne’s guidance. But in the end she’d gotten the hang of it. With leather she’d done better - she was used to working with hides, and there weren’t as many new steps to learn. Over time, and with the help of the others that had taught her, like Baldor, she’d gotten to a level that was considered worthy of an apprentice.</p>
<p>The heat had never been something she’d liked, but Wylaia was willing to put up with it - because what she loved was the slow and steady endurance of the task. Her grandmother had said she’d taken to alchemy so well not because of her intelligence, but her patience. She could happily spend hours watching a cauldron simmer. Smithing wasn’t all that different; you were just much more active in those times of ‘waiting’.</p>
<p>So Wylaia wandered around the smithy, noting where everything was, and then selected a good piece of leather to boil. From the smell, the vat Harritt had was full of oil - unsurprising, since in Thedas they seemed to also lean towards using wax for candles and the like, rather than magic. It had seemed unlikely they’d waste it on leather. A pity. It was easy to enchant a sconce, though she suspected that given the views on magic here, that wouldn’t go down that well. She resolved to do it for a single lantern, at least for their own hut - if she could get an enchanting table set up.</p>
<p>Whilst the leather boiled, she first searched through the collection of molds. There were several for bracers of varying size, and more for greaves. She suspected that the piece of leather she’d put to boil would shrink by about half, but it wasn’t easy to guess without knowing what kind of oil Harritt used. She could have asked, of course - but that would have been easy. To play it safe, she selected a couple of molds from each, those for greaves being on the smaller side.</p>
<p>The sun had risen fully by the time her leather was boiled and ready to be formed. It had given her long enough to start on the straps needed, though she hadn’t fully cut them down yet - it’d be a foolish thing to do until she knew what size the boiled piece had come out. All the while, Wylaia could feel Harritt watching her, even as he got working on an order of swords for the Commander.</p>
<p>In the end, her boiled leather was smaller than she’d expected, but she was able to shape it perfectly around the sort of bracer that would have done well for her arm, or a slender man’s. Securing it down and cutting the edges clean, she placed it to the side to harden, then worked on cutting, stitching, and boring holes into the straps. One of Harritt’s assistants had pointed her to the buckles that had been made the day before, which she worked onto the straps, using pincers to bend the softer metal around the end of the leather and hold it fast.</p>
<p>Wylaia presented the finished straps and the still-drying bracer to Harritt a little before noon. She was drenched in sweat, longing to plant her face into the nearest snow dune, and starving - and a grin as wide as the sun was stretched across her face.</p>
<p>“It’ll need a good while longer to set,” she said, gesturing to the shining leather. “But it won’t take more than a half hour to stitch it on once it’s done.”</p>
<p>Harritt snorted. “You sew like a snail, elf?”</p>
<p>“No, sir,” Wylaia said, still grinning. “I sew like someone who’s had their straps tear off at an inopportune moment.”</p>
<p>There was a pause while Harritt studied the straps, turning them over, the buckle jingling as it wiggled around. Eventually he nodded, placed it down, and held out his hand for Wylaia to shake. Politely, she did not comment on the grimy nature of his grip, nor he on hers.</p>
<p>“That was a bow on your back, yesterday,” he said, with what amounted to a grin - a shifting of his moustache. “You know how to fletch, too?”</p>
<p>“Good luck finding a living archer who doesn’t,” Wylaia replied.</p>
<p>“Hmph,” Harritt grunted, the sound turning into a chuckle. “You’re a weird son of a bitch, elf, but I like you. Same time tomorrow. And tell Flissa you’re on my crew - she’ll give you double portions at lunch.”</p>
<p>He made no comment on the fact that Wylaia did, in fact, press snow all over her face and neck the moment she’d finally washed her hands.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>By the time she’d washed up, changed back into her robes, and eaten the double portion Flissa had happily given her, Wylaia could hear a crowd growing somewhere in the village. It didn’t take much effort to follow them, and to hear the aggrieved voice of the Commander calling: “If you would all please just give the Herald some space…”</p>
<p>Out of habit, Wylaia politely cleared her throat a few times when she met a wall of people. It drew their attention, and then her face did the rest; the villagers who had gathered to see the Herald off began to bow and scrape and do anything they could to make enough space for her to pass. It was something of a change, Wylaia thought, to not hear the hushed whisper of the word <em>Dragonborn</em> as they did so.</p>
<p>As she reached the front, the Commander moved to step in front of her - then paused, and stepped aside, but nonetheless gave her a stern look. She expected some kind of recrimination - Ellana had told her he was a little judgemental of mages - but all he said was, “I can’t hold them off for long,” his voice a gruff murmur.</p>
<p>Wylaia shot him a small, grateful smile, then made her way to where Ellana was stood, dressed for travel.</p>
<p>“Goldeneyes!” exclaimed Varric as she approached, clapping her on the shoulder. “And here we were all starting to think you wouldn’t make it in time.”</p>
<p>“That is a terrible nickname, Master Tethras,” Ellana pronounced with a sigh and a shake of her head. “It’s far too obvious.”</p>
<p>Varric grinned. “I’d have a better one if you hadn’t been monopolising the good healer’s time and attention.”</p>
<p>“Actually,” interjected Solas, examining her curiously, “I have heard tell that our good healer’s talents are being wasted on the smithy.”</p>
<p>“One could argue that my smithing talents are wasted on the apothecary,” Wylaia replied, but with a smile. “Alchemy is my heart, but we need other organs to survive too.”</p>
<p>Solas inclined his head in acknowledgement. “Very well.”</p>
<p>“I didn’t realise you were going today,” Wylaia said, turning to Ellana and casting her eyes over the packs that sat next to them, and the map that Cassandra - who was stood a little way off, speaking with Leliana - was gripping tightly. “You said a day or two.”</p>
<p>With a sigh, Ellana brushed her hair out of her eyes. “Leliana had some reports come in. There are mages and templars there - a lot of them. Fighting, and the people who live there are caught in the middle. They’re the ones Giselle is helping.”</p>
<p>Understanding washed over Wylaia’s face. Stepping forward, she leant down to give Ellana a hug. The Dalish woman stiffened in surprise, but hugged her back, her marked hand causing the curls on the back of Wylaia’s head to stand on end as it brushed against them.</p>
<p>“I’ll take care of those things for you,” Wylaia murmured as she stepped back, squeezing Ellana’s hands once and letting them go. “Have a safe journey.”</p>
<p>“Leliana says there are ravens there. To bring letters back and forth.”</p>
<p>Wylaia smiled. “I’ll make sure to write.”</p>
<p>“Just, ah -” Ellana said, smiling awkwardly. “She’ll read them.”</p>
<p>Golden eyes flickering to where Leliana was now saying goodbye to Cassandra, Wylaia nodded. “She’d be terrible at her job if she didn’t, you know. Write me when you get there.”</p>
<p>Ellana sighed. “I will.”</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>“I won’t say no to some help,” Adan said, when Wylaia appeared at the apothecary a few hours later. “You can start by getting the hang of a basic healing potion. That book over there - index’s at the front. See how you do.”</p>
<p>Wylaia’s favourite place to work her craft had never been the alchemist’s shops scattered through Skyrim - though she’d liked the people she met in them well enough, with the exception of Nurelion, who was frankly just an ass. Quintus was nice enough, though, and the two of them had spent a long time talking about methods as she’d worked. No, the places she’d liked the most were the hidden places. The secret places.</p>
<p>Her rooms in Winterhold were one, but she also loved the lab that was hidden in the catacombs beneath it. She’d loved the alchemy room tucked under the place where she’d learned the word that she’d never been able to bring herself to bind a soul to: <em>aus</em>. Suffer. It went with <em>krii</em> - kill - which also lay in the back of her mind, untouched by the souls she still had loose within her.</p>
<p>Shaking the thought away, Wylaia found the recipe, then began to sort through for the ingredients. It wasn’t complex, and the methods were very similar to what she was used to. You couldn’t deviate much from chopping, grinding, boiling - these things were as common as the concept of plants having healing properties at all.</p>
<p>Even still, to be certain, she tore pieces off each of the ingredients and chewed them. The elfroot leaves left her tongue slightly numb, which was a good sign that it would work for healing, whilst the root was like bitter liquorice. Good for the stomach, then.</p>
<p>“What in the Maker’s name are you doing?”</p>
<p>“Hm?” Wylaia said, spitting the remaining root out into her palm. “Oh, I’m working out the properties of your ingredients.”</p>
<p>Adan held up a hand, then gestured it first at Wylaia, second at the book spread open before her. “You didn’t get it from there?”</p>
<p>“Yes, of course. But there aren’t always books or people to teach you, and all of these ingredients had to be discovered somehow, you know.”</p>
<p>“Even poison?”</p>
<p>Wylaia chuckled. “Ask me about the day I found my first imp stool, sometime. It’s a mushroom and it is terribly poisonous, if you don’t prepare it right.”</p>
<p>“You’re mad,” Adan said, shaking his head. “...how do you do it?”</p>
<p>Grinning, Wylaia beckoned him over and held out a new piece of elfroot leaf.</p>
<p>By the time they were done, they had made a huge batch of healing potion, and Adan now had a good idea of how to tell when a plant had pain relief properties. Wylaia left with fingers stained green and an ache that ran all the way up the underside of her forearm, the result of too long at the mortar and pestle. There was, she thought, no finer feeling in all the world. Except maybe the moment you sat in front of a lit fire.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>“Excuse me, Lady Healer?”</p>
<p>Having been so engrossed in her sketching that she’d failed to notice the door open, Wylaia almost dropped it in surprise. “Oh! Hilyen. You’ve got a talent for startling me, apparently.”</p>
<p>Hilyen lowered her head in shame, and mumbled, “I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>“No, no, it’s alright. What can I do for you?”</p>
<p>“I was wondering whether you’d be taking your meal in the tavern, m’lady, or if you’d like it brought to you today.”</p>
<p>Wylaia’s first instinct was to ask for it to be brought here - she didn’t feel like an evening of being stared at, today. But then a thought, an opportunity, occurred to her. Putting her sketchbook to the side, Wylaia leant forward and tilted her head.</p>
<p>“Hilyen,” she said, “where do you and the other elves eat?”</p>
<p>“At the farmhouse, m’lady. Where we were p- where we’re staying.” Awkwardly, Hilyen looked down and pulled at a stray thread on her apron. “And not until later, once you all have been served.”</p>
<p>Wylaia nodded. “Would it be alright if I ate with all of you? You can bring my food here, and then I’ll take it to the farmhouse, so you don’t have to share.”</p>
<p>The elf worked her mouth open and closed several times before stammering a reply. “Y-yes, of course that would - that is, if you really - it’s just that we aren’t -”</p>
<p>“Thank you,” Wylaia interrupted, smiling warmly. “It’s just that they all stare, in the tavern, and I’d really like to be without that for a while.”</p>
<p>This stopped Hilyen’s stammering at once, understanding widening her already wide eyes. “Oh, m’lady, I hadn’t thought...that is, you’re the Herald’s healer, surely...”</p>
<p>“People stare at Ellana too, you know.”</p>
<p>“B-but they shouldn’t! Or, that is, they should, but not like that! She’s...Lady Healer, you must understand what she means to all of us. With her who she is, there’s a chance that they might start to realise - that we might get to -”</p>
<p>Wylaia smiled as Hilyen trailed off, her burst of energy fading into shyness. “That’s the other reason I want to come and meet everyone. Ellana wants to help. She thinks that she can, because she’s their Herald. But I need to find out what’s wrong before she can fix it.”</p>
<p>Hilyen’s fine brows set into a knotted line; not disagreement, but determination. “There’s plenty wrong with it.”</p>
<p>“I know. Look - you have other people to sort dinners for. Bring mine here last, and we’ll walk over together.”</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>The farmhouse, so Hilyen had called it, was not worthy of the name.</p>
<p>Oh, it had the shell that suggested it might’ve once been such a thing, but half of the roof was gone, and most of the sides of three of the four walls. It seemed only to be held together by the chimney, which unlike the rest of the wood and mud structure was made of stone. It made it easy to see even from close to Haven, the fires in the ground and first floor fireplaces casting a play of light and shadow over the ruined building.</p>
<p>“What do you do when it rains?” Wylaia asked quietly.</p>
<p>Hilyen looked at her, smiled sadly, and said, “We pray.”</p>
<p>As they approached, the sound began to wash over them. It was the sound of chatter, of bustling life, of happiness and sadness in equal measure. It was a warm sound; like a tavern before those within became too intoxicated to be welcoming. Wylaia clutched her fingers tighter around the one bottle of Skyrim wine she’d had in her pack and took a steadying breath.</p>
<p>They entered the building not through the gap in the side, which would have done just as well (and been quicker to get to), but through the door. It seemed a point of pride, or of deflection. If the hole in the wall did not exist, then it could not trouble them. Hilyen held the door open for Wylaia, and then stepped to her side afterwards, the wood creaking as it struggled to close behind them.</p>
<p>“It’s swollen from the damp,” Hilyen explained, as Wylaia turned to help. “Just have to give it a good shove.”</p>
<p>With the door finally closed, they began to weave their way through the elves. They each glanced over at Wylaia, their gazes intense, but they did not stare. She felt certain they were talking about her, but it didn’t seem threatening in the way it did when it happened in the tavern. This was due in no small part to the fact that - to Wylaia’s astonishment - there were children here. A dozen or so, of varying ages, from a babe swaddled against one man’s chest to a group of teens who were clustered in what remained of the open corner.</p>
<p>Anger swelled in Wylaia’s chest, just like it had the first time she’d been to the corner of Windhelm where the Dunmer were segregated. They, too, had been out in the snow. In the time she’d been there, investigating the murders, one of them had died. Not because they’d been stabbed by a madman, but because they had just frozen for lack of somewhere to sleep. She’d almost walked into the Palace and punched Ulfric Stormcloak in the face. Only when she was halfway there had Wylaia realised that there were better ways for her to help.</p>
<p>“Just through here,” Hilyen said, leading Wylaia through a wall that was now so broken down it acted as more of a divider than anything. This was the room the light was spilling from, with the fireplace within it. This room was long - the entire width of the farmhouse. Whether it had been at first, or not, Wylaia wasn’t sure. What she did notice were the beams of wood that had been placed here and there, holding the floor above in place. They still had their bark on; they weren’t worked wood at all, but trunks used for a purpose.</p>
<p>From out of the group by the fire stood a man that Wylaia would have placed at middle age, perhaps a bit older. He was tall, with olive toned skin, and greying black hair that was swept into an intricate braid. His face was worn from the sun, creased with both time and laughter, and lit up in a smile that exaggerated every line as he held his hands out to Wylaia.</p>
<p>“You must be the healer,” he said, shaking her hand in a tight grip. He had an unfamiliar accent that was rounded and warm, not unlike Varric’s. “I’m Gethon. Welcome to the farmhouse.”</p>
<p>Wylaia smiled back, finding it impossible not to. “Thank you for having me. I bought you something, I wasn’t sure if - well, it seemed rude not to. Wine, from my homeland. They make it from a type of grape called jazbay, which only grows around there.”</p>
<p>“A kind gift,” Gethon said, bowing and taking the bottle from her. He wrapped one hand around the basket at the bottle’s foot, and pulled the cork to smell it. “Smells grand.”</p>
<p>“It’s very clever,” Wylaia found herself saying, “how they mull it. The grapes themselves are excellent at helping with the channel of magic, you see, but can be poisonous raw, making your body more sensitive to magical and mundane pain. But the grapes can take a much higher temperature than most without losign their flavour, and...I’m rambling.”</p>
<p>As Wylaia rubbed her hand sheepishly on the side of her face, Gethon laughed - not at her expense, but warmly, recorking the wine and patting her on the shoulder. “Aye, but give it half an hour and you’ll have met a dozen people who’ll do the same thing about a good grape. Come, come. Let me introduce you. Hilyen, get some food and for the love of the Maker, sit down.”</p>
<p>Gethon led her to sit in front of the fire, where a small circle was gathered. He introduced her first - Wylaia was grateful to find that he used her actual name, and did not at any point call her ‘my lady’ or ‘lady healer’. Then he gestured to each of the five people seated there in turn.</p>
<p>Right next to the fire was Isewyn, a round-faced woman with short blonde hair that curled around her ears. She had her arm around a young boy, perhaps five or six, who Gethon introduced as Varlhen, her son. On his other side was Ashinne, a woman who reminded Wylaia powerfully of her grandmother - short more from hunching than from stature, dark brown skin, and a tumble of grey hair around her head. Lastly, close to the other side of the fire, were two men named Cyris and Camron. They were both muscular, in that lean way the elves here mostly seemed to be, with dark hair and light skin.</p>
<p>“Hello,” Wylaia said, finding - as she often did - that there was a knot in her chest again, at being around so many strangers.</p>
<p>There was a gap between Cyris and Ashinne, into which Gethon gestured for her to sit. He joined on her right, placing the wine down in front of them, where a selection of food lay. It was the sort of peasant fare that Wylaia preferred - breads, cheeses, some cured meats, and in front of the fire a pot of what smelled like stew. It seemed to be communal, so Wylaia reached into the bag she’d brought and placed the food Hilyen had given her there. Resting alongside their offerings, it became clear that what she had was the good food - theirs was the leftovers, the offcuts, the things not good enough to be fed to those who were ‘important’.</p>
<p>“So, Wylaia,” Gethon said, uncorking the wine again and beginning to pour it into cups that Ashinne held out. For one horrible moment, Wylaia thought he was going to ask that most awful question, the one she’d been asked before everyone around her knew who she was: <em>tell us about yourself.</em> But instead he smiled and said, “How is our Herald doing?”</p>
<p>Wylaia’s first instinct was to comment only on Ellana’s health - but as all the pointed ears around them were turned curiously towards her, she had a second instinct. The one that, she suspected, Ellana would want her to follow.</p>
<p>“Well,” Wylaia said, “she’s recovered, but I’m afraid what she’s stepped into is worse.” Glancing round, she noted that none of the elves wore vallaslin, at least not where she could see them. And it seemed from Ellana’s that they were meant to be visible. “She wants to help, but they’re trying to tear away everything that she is.”</p>
<p>“’Course they are,” Isewyn sighed, taking her own cup from Ashinne. “She ain’t a person to them. Jus’ a thing.”</p>
<p>Camron snorted. “Ungrateful girl. It’s an honour to be chosen by the Maker’s Bride.”</p>
<p>“Not for Ellana,” Wylaia found herself protesting, then shifted uncomfortably as they all looked at her. “She’s Dalish. She doesn’t believe in Andraste. She has her own Gods.”</p>
<p>“Aye, the girl’s right,” sighed Ashinne, as she handed out the last cup - a ceramic one which was chipped at the top. Gethon passed it back to her when it was partially full. “That child’s as much a prisoner as any of us are.”</p>
<p>Offering one of the cheeses, Isewyn asked, “Is there anythin’ we can do for ‘er?”</p>
<p>“Actually,” Wylaia said, with a smile, “I’m here because she’d like to know what she can do for you.”</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>By the time Wylaia made it home, well aware that she was going to regret the lack of sleep when it was time to go to the smithy at dawn, she had a plan. More importantly, she had a list of everything that was wrong for the elves, and thoughts on how to get each of them sorted. The farmhouse itself had to be the first thing, because it was disgusting that all of those people - those <em>children</em> - were sleeping in the bloody snow.</p>
<p>As she’d left, Gethon had cautioned her not to be too hard on the Inquisition. “Most of them,” he’d said, “probably don’t even realise what’s going on.”</p>
<p>As far as Wylaia was concerned, that was just as bad as being the people who’d put them into the broken building in the first place. No, she wasn’t going to go gently on them. </p>
<p>After all, Ellana wouldn’t want her to.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you all so much for reading, and giving kudos, and commenting. You make my week, every week. I'll see you next Wednesday to find out how well Wylaia does at knocking some sense into the Inquisition!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. For The Better</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>With Ellana gone to the Hinterlands, Wylaia begins to set about the simple task of revolution. And revolution, it turns out, is significantly easier once you've been introduced to a beautiful woman in an ugly outfit.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hello! I have not, in fact, been eaten by a dragon. I'm ever so sorry for the wait for a new chapter - October was awful. However, we've made it to November, and it's Nanowrimo month! I'm going to be working on the Herbalist through the month, so you should hopefully see chapters much more frequently, assuming nothing else explodes.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Reaching up to smooth down the twist she’d managed to wrestle her hair into, Wylaia relished in the crunch of her boots as she made her way up the slope to Leliana’s tent. Why the woman chose a tent to stay in when there were plenty of buildings, Wylaia wasn’t sure - though thinking about it, it probably had something to do with the birds that flew to and from her almost constantly.</p>
<p>When Wylaia hopped over the wall, nodding to the Quartermaster on her way past, and circled around the tent in question, Leliana was knelt over a bench, writing something.</p>
<p>“Am I interrupting?”</p>
<p>“Mm? Oh, no, not at all.” Resting her quill down, Leliana stood and turned. “What do you need?”</p>
<p>Wylaia’s lips quirked in a half-smile. “Most people open with ‘hello’, or ‘how are you’.”</p>
<p>“Most people do not understand how little time we have to waste,” Leliana snapped, before sighing. “What do you need?”</p>
<p>Evidently the sigh was the closest Wylaia would get to an apology from the woman who, when she had been trapped in a cell, had spent hours explaining to her how Thedas worked. Out here in the cold, she saw nothing of the warmer Leliana, who had sat with her and told her stories of the past few months like they were grand legends.</p>
<p>She wanted very much, she realised, to see that woman again. But she was unlikely to find her out here.</p>
<p>“I would like to speak to someone about the conditions the elves are living in. Who would be best?”</p>
<p>Leliana raised an eyebrow; she had not missed the slight emphasis on the word <em>speak</em>. But there was a gleam in her eyes, too. Something Wylaia couldn’t make out. “You have not met Josie, I do not think. She is our diplomatic adviser. Normally her work concerns those from outside Haven - but I am sure she would be happy to consider those within, as well.”</p>
<p>“Where would I find her?” Wylaia asked.</p>
<p>A few moments later, Wylaia was tapping the snow off her boots as she made her way through the Chantry, to the room on the far left that Leliana had indicated. She had not been in there before, but now that she looked at it, she remembered Jim mentioning it on his tour. She really ought to find Jim and see how he was doing - but it seemed that the scouts had a tendency to disappear for days on end for reasons they could never disclose.</p>
<p>Raising her hand, Wylaia knocked on the door to the Ambassador’s room, and waited.</p>
<p>“Come in!”</p>
<p>Josephine’s rooms were warm, both in temperature and in lighting. To the right was a woman who didn’t match the description Leliana had given her, but unmistakably a mage - her robes were lined with fur in a way not unlike Wylaia’s own. Wylaia’s quarry was behind the desk - a woman with skin the same hue as her own, dark hair up in a crown braid, wearing an outfit that Wylaia found grossly ostentatious but seemed somehow to suit her.</p>
<p>“He-” was as far as Wylaia got before the woman had all but leapt out of her chair and swept around the desk.</p>
<p>“Ah! You must be the Herald’s companion! I am so glad to finally meet you at last. Please, come in. Would you like a seat? Tea? The pot I have has gone cold, but I can call for another.”</p>
<p>Wylaia smiled - it seemed impossible not to - and shook her head. “No, I am quite alright, thank you. You must be Josie.”</p>
<p>“Josephine Montilyet,” the Ambassador said, guiding Wylaia to a seat and sitting opposite in a flourish of gold. “It is a pleasure to meet you. Is your ladyship the correct form of address?”</p>
<p>The nervous laugh that escaped Wylaia’s lips was probably <em>not</em> the reaction that was expected. Rubbing her cheek, she said, “Ah - no.” Then, realising from Josephine’s earnest look that she ought to give the woman <em>something</em>, Wylaia added, “I do have titles where I come from, but they have no meaning here.”</p>
<p>Josephine nodded. “If we were in your homeland, how would you prefer to be addressed?”</p>
<p>“By my name?”</p>
<p>“Oh, but we cannot possibly do such a thing,” Josephine laughed. “Come, there must be one title that you do not mind.”</p>
<p>There was one. One she hadn’t minded, because though she hadn’t earned it to begin with, she’d earned it in the end. But here in Thedas, it would probably be a bit more complicated. Still, Josephine had asked...</p>
<p>“Archmage?”</p>
<p>Josephine pursed her lips. “Well,” she said, diplomatically, “it is certainly not unknown that you are a mage. We could pass it off as a rare title where you come from...”</p>
<p>“It <em>is</em> a rare title where I come from,” Wylaia interjected, confused.</p>
<p>“Ah, of course! But where you come from and where people will think you come from - these are not the same,” Josephine said, with a secretive smile.</p>
<p>Wylaia sighed. “I wish someone would give me a list of who does and doesn’t know. This would all be much easier that way.”</p>
<p>“I can certainly provide such a thing, if it would be useful to you.”</p>
<p>“It...really would, in fact,” Wylaia said, laughing softly. “But that isn’t why I came to see you. I was told that you would be the person to speak to regarding the conditions the elves live in, here in Haven.”</p>
<p>Josephine frowned. “Are they not suitable? We provided them with a building - I know that it is not large enough, but we are all struggling a little for space here...”</p>
<p>Rubbing her fingers against her lips, Wylaia bit back several comments about how ignorant this evidently well-meaning woman was. “Have you ever seen it, Lady Josephine?”</p>
<p>“I have not,” Josephine said, tapping her fingers on the desk, her eyes tensing in thought. “Perhaps you would be so kind as to show me.”</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>Dressed in her winter coat, Josephine made Wylaia feel even more underdressed than she had before. The woman was resplendent from neck to ankle in black and gold brocade, with a glossy fur trim that allowed just a little of the thick gold chains she wore. At least, Wylaia thought one called them chains. It was certainly more than a necklace. No one in Skyrim had worn anything of the like. In Cyrodiil, maybe...but not the sort of people Wylaia had been around.</p>
<p>“So, Archmage,” Josephine said with a warm smile, adjusting the clipboard planted her hip as they walked through the Haven gates. “Tell me about yourself. I would love to hear more of your home.”</p>
<p>“Oh. Ah, hasn’t Leliana told you?”</p>
<p>“Of course! But why would I pass up the opportunity to hear the stories from their source?”</p>
<p>Wylaia rubbed her cheek with a gloved hand. “Well, I’m from Valenwood originally, but I always wanted to travel. I ended up in Cyrodiil for a few years, working with some of the alchemists there, but then I found a book.”</p>
<p>“A book?” Josephine asked, flashing a curious smile. “You make it sound so sinister.”</p>
<p>“In my experience,” Wylaia said, closing her eyes and instantly seeing the moulded leather binding of the Black Books, “every time something goes wrong, a book is involved.”</p>
<p>“So what was in this book?”</p>
<p>“A story about a plant that existed. The place I come from, as a whole, is known as Nirn - and this plant was called Nirnroot. It grows near water, and glows lightly. Only the glow has changed over time, the colour that is, which is particularly interesting if you read Sinderion’s research on - anyway, it’s very rare. By the time I found out about it, it barely existed in Cyrodiil. So I went to the one place it was still growing - Skyrim.”</p>
<p>They were a good way down the path now, and Wylaia could see the shape of the farmhouse in the distance. She wondered at what point Josephine would notice the hole in the wall. She began to keep a closer watch on the woman’s face, wanting to see her reaction when she did.</p>
<p>“And did you find any?” Josephine asked.</p>
<p>Wylaia nodded. “Yes. Only I also walked into a war, and found myself arrested by one side for being suspected to be part of the other. It turned out I’d managed to wander into the place where the rebel leader was. Next thing I knew, I was being brought in for execution along with him.”</p>
<p>Josephine’s eyes widened, and for a moment Wylaia thought she’d spotted it. But then she turned to her and said, “For execution? My goodness - but you survived, of course. Were you able to escape?”</p>
<p>“I had some help,” Wylaia said, grinning slightly. “From a dragon.”</p>
<p>“A dragon!”</p>
<p>“Yes. Not intentionally, I might add.” Although she’d since wondered if it <em>was</em>, given what she’d turned out to be. Had the dragon known? “It just happened to pick that moment to burn down the town we were being executed in. I was on the block when everything started burning. One of the other prisoners helped me escape.”</p>
<p>“Oh my,” Josephine said. Her words almost overlapped Wylaia’s own, and came out in a soft, breathy tone that was more than surprise. Following her gaze, and looking upon the now unmistakably open farmhouse, Wylaia sighed.</p>
<p>“Have you ever been to the sort of place where elves are housed, Josephine?”</p>
<p>“I...” the Ambassador breathed, her eyes blinking widely. “I have not.”</p>
<p>“I talked to the people who live here. The Alienages - that is what you call them, yes? - they are all like this. They are all given to the people who live there by those in power, who think they are doing them ‘a favour’. A ‘kindness’. Broken buildings that they don’t have the resources or time to mend themselves. Hidden, distant corners that the other races don’t have to look at. There was a place like it in Skyrim, where they’d thrown all the dark elves. Once, I found someone who lived there frozen to death.”</p>
<p>Josephine pressed her fingertips against her lips. “Why haven’t they said something?” she asked, softly.</p>
<p>Wylaia looked down, and scuffed the toe of her boot against the snow. “Because people like you don’t listen, Josie.”</p>
<p>For a moment, it seemed as if Josephine were as frozen as the dirt that lay beneath the snow they were stood upon. Her lips were parted beneath the fingers that still rested upon them; her clipboard was digging hard into her hip where she was pressing it. And there was a deep, knotted frown in her neat brows.</p>
<p>“Cassandra told me,” Josephine said eventually, pulling her hand from her lips and plucking the quill from the top of her clipboard, “that the Herald refuses to sacrifice her heritage. The traditions and religions of her people.”</p>
<p>Wylaia nodded. “Yes. She does.”</p>
<p>“Well. She can certainly not do that if her Inquisition is freezing her people to death.” Josephine drew a sharp, but deep breath, and looked at Wylaia sternly. “We must represent her, just as she represents us. Otherwise, we shall never hope to make this work. No one will take her seriously, otherwise. No one will take us seriously.”</p>
<p>Quirking her lips into a smile, Wylaia observed, “The rest of the world might not take you seriously if you start helping the people they prefer to ignore.”</p>
<p>The firm expression on Josephine’s face shifted - it became a bright, brilliant smile that seemed incongruous alongside the broken building before them. “Oh,” she said, with a joyous laugh, “but helping the people they are ignoring - that is exactly the point. Of all of this.”</p>
<p>“I’m glad you think so,” Wylaia said, as they began to walk again. “Because it’s going to take a lot of work to fix this...”</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>
  <em>Aneth ara, Wylaia,</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I had a horrible moment when I sat down to write where I thought, all of a sudden, that you might not be able to read our script. But Solas assures me that your notes were in the same writing as we use, some of it at least, and so the only fear remaining is that you will not be able to read my handwriting. I hope it isn’t as terrible as my Keeper always told me it was.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>The Hinterlands are in a terrible state. It took us all day to reach Mother Giselle, because the fighting here is so bad. The Mother herself was...surprising. I expected someone much worse. But for a <strike>she</strike> human, she is not so terrible. She has agreed to help us, to Cassandra’s delight. But we are not coming back yet. There are too many people here that need help.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Tomorrow we are going to press on to the west, where some of the fighting is worst. I have never really fought Templars, before. I had never even seen one before the Conclave. To me - to my people - they are really just more humans. They already all look at us like Templars look at mages. I didn’t really find it much worse, if I am honest.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>This land is beautiful, though. Rolling hills and beautiful green cliffs. I think that you would like it. Solas and I collected some plants that we thought you might be interested in - not just the ones we use for alchemy, but others too, that you might not know. I’ve pressed them in the other papers here. I know it’s hardly ideal, but it was better than them arriving in broken lumps.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>How is Haven? Have you managed to speak to the others? To arrange anything? I have thought of them a lot, out here. There are a few scouts who are elven, and they have told me that things are a little better for them, but I worry for those still in the farmhouse. Please let me know as soon as you have any news.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Oh - and do you know what sort of animal would have the best pelts? Is it rams? They’re easy to catch, but I worry the quality isn’t good enough. I thought of bears, as there are plenty round here, but the hunters in my clan always tell us to avoid bears at all costs. Wolves, maybe? But then they are smaller.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Dareth shiral, lethallan,</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Ellana</em>
</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>“...and so, I thought it would be best if we simply sourced the materials necessary and handed it over. I do not wish to send too many strangers into their home, you see.”</p>
<p>Wylaia rubbed the side of her face. “Well,” she said, looking up at Josephine’s earnest smile, “wouldn’t you be paying people to go and rebuild the farmhouse? So if you just give them the materials and leave them to it...”</p>
<p>“Oh! Of course, no, I would also see them paid.”</p>
<p>“The same amount as the human staff?”</p>
<p>Josephine’s lips parted for a moment. “Are they not - oh dear. I will add that to my list.”</p>
<p>“It’s not just that their pay is different,” Wylaia said, endeavoring to sound like an authority on the subject, when in fact she’d wheedled all of it from the rest of the elves over the past week, “it’s that they’re only employed to do the jobs that pay badly. They don’t get chances at apprenticeships that pay more. They’re left to do the cleaning, running messages, feeding people. The jobs that have long hours and low wages.”</p>
<p>“Surely they must be concerned about the - recrimination they might face in those other spaces?” Josephine asked, tapping the end of her quill against her chin.</p>
<p>Wylaia chuckled. “Trust me, they’re used to it. And they’re willing to live with it, if it means they can - you know. Feed themselves. Clothe themselves. Do the same for their children. Because these are the stakes we’re talking about, Josie. Not whether they can afford alto wine instead of the bitter ale at the bottom of the cask.”</p>
<p>“I am not familiar with that type of wine. Is it from your homeland?”</p>
<p>“Oh - yes, sorry. Expensive and rare - it’s made from jazbay grapes which only grow in a certain region of Skyrim, and...well, I’m sure you have an equivalent.”</p>
<p>Josephine nodded. “Yes, I understand. Well, it seems that our list is growing longer. I hope that we will be able to attend to all of it before the Herald returns, but…”</p>
<p>“You’re not undoing the abuse of all elvenkind ever, Josie,” Wylaia said, smiling softly. “Just the ones who are here.”</p>
<p>“Now, perhaps. But in the future? If the world sees us undertaking this, and a Dalish Herald? The influence we could have -”</p>
<p>Trailing off, Josephine looked across the office, her expression becoming somewhat wistful. She was, Wylaia had realised about thirty seconds into knowing her, distractingly beautiful - especially in the moments where she paused to think. The advantage to that, of course, was that she never noticed the times that Wylaia forgot it was rude to stare.</p>
<p>“One thing at a time, Josie,” Wylaia said, her small smile becoming a grin. “Was there anything else you needed? I should really get this letter sent off.”</p>
<p>“No, no! Please, do not let me keep you. It is a letter to the Herald, yes? I am certain she will be glad to hear from you. It must be hard for her, to have had to leave so suddenly.”</p>
<p>“If I know one thing about Ellana, it’s that she doesn’t mind travelling. We have that in common. I’ll see you soon, Josie.”</p>
<p>“Be well, Archmage!”</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>
  <em>Ellana,</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I can’t say I’m glad to hear you’ve been fighting most of the time you’ve been there, but I’m glad you’ve found the person you were looking for. Take your time, just remember you can’t fix all the problems in the world at once, okay?</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Things are looking up here. I went to the farmhouse as soon as I could. You’re right, it’s bad. But we’re getting it sorted - I showed Josie the farmhouse. She’d never seen it. She didn’t even realise that the elves were being paid less, and she’s the one who manages all the accounts. She and her people do, at least. Anyway, point is, we’re getting there.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>It might actually help two things at once. See, Josie is convinced that if the Inquisition is going to have a Dalish Herald, it might as well go all in. Use the chance to change things for the better. It surprised me, but then I went to thank Leliana for sending me to her and - well, let’s say I think your Nightingale might’ve had a word with her friend.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>For pelts - you’re right that bears are the best, but even still they’re not worth the effort. Not unless you can get the drop on them. If you can get a good, long-distance line of sight and a bow? You’ve got a good chance, and it’s worth it. Ask Varric what his range is, he’ll be able to work it out. If you’re limited, just go for whatever you can. Rams, wolves, even sheep - just don’t waste any part of it. If you’re doing it for someone else, take the corpses wholesale to them and let them deal with it for you. They’ll be able to make proper use of the meat and the bones. Just be sure not to use fire magic on any of them. You probably know that - sorry.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Oh, and thank you for the herbs. You’re right, pressed isn’t the best, but to get to see it at all - it’s worth it. I only wish I was there to see it with you. But I’d probably be more of a liability out there than anything. Speaking of which, no more nightmares. But in a way, that makes me more nervous. You know how sometimes it feels like if you don’t have any, they’re just laying in wait? Doing something you can’t see, ready to come back worse? I don’t know. All I can do is thank Akatosh for each day that passes without another nightmare.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Take care of yourself, please.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>W</em>
</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>No sooner had Wylaia sent the letter off than she began to worry that she should have told Ellana not to fight a bear at all. She and Lydia had almost both been killed by one, once. There had been a Nirnroot right near the building it was nesting in. Of course - it always seemed to be Nirnroot that got her into trouble. All the way back to the hut, Wylaia found herself thinking about it. Worrying. From what she’d seen of Ellana in a fight, she certainly knew what she was doing. Her Destruction magic - <em>no, they didn’t call it that here</em>. What was it Ellana had said it was called? Elemental? That was certainly an adequate descriptor, at least. Either way, Ellana was good. Very good. But a bear could tear her apart in a few seconds.</p>
<p>The problem was, Lydia had been on one side of the river, and Wylaia had been on the other. Only they weren’t the right way round. Wylaia was the one who had asked for a moment to pop over and get that Nirnroot. Wylaia was the one who had plucked it, washed the roots off, and begun slipping it into her satchel when the roar had come. Maybe if they’d been the other way round it wouldn’t have been so bad. But they weren’t. Ice magic had slowed the bear down a little, but this was well before she’d gotten the hang of some of the harder spells, so it wasn’t long enough. Lydia began raining arrow upon arrow down, but the bear hardly flinched.</p>
<p>In the end it had slammed into Wylaia from behind, shoving her face down into the ground as it stepped on her with one mighty paw. The world had gone black instantly; she’d still been able to hear things, though. Lydia’s agonised shout. The sound of heavy metal thrashing in water. Lydia had managed to lead the bear off her, and Wylaia had woken up for just long enough to reach out to the creature.</p>
<p>“Calm, friend,” she’d whispered - the words half a plea and half an invocation, as she’d pushed all of the force of her link to the natural world into it. The bear had stopped, turned, and looked at her. She’d asked it to wait, wait for all of the minute or so they had before their power would wear off, wait until Lydia had downed one of the largest healing potions they had and picked Wylaia up to start running. Wait until they were the other side of the river again, and out of sight, the damned Nirnroot still dangling from where it was half in her satchel.</p>
<p>But that couldn’t happen to Ellana. It wouldn’t. Ellana had several more people with her, for a start, and they would know what they could and couldn’t handle.</p>
<p>Wearily, Wylaia closed the door to the hut and sank down into the bed, feeling as heavy as if she’d just trekked across the tundra. It wasn’t the big things. The threat of what Miraak was doing, Ellana’s tasks, sorting things out for the elves...those things felt oddly comforting. Normal, for her life as a Dragonborn. No, it was the small things that were weighing upon her. Trying to remember how their coinage worked. Trying to keep track of everyone’s names. Trying to get used to the food, which was at once familiar and unfamiliar.</p>
<p>She wanted her bed in the house she and Lydia had built, one summer where they’d thought to themselves - well, if we have all this coin, we might as well do something with it. She’d wanted to make it a home for the orphans they’d found. Like the girl in Whiterun who had sat with her under the tree once it was healed, and talked happily about being able to see the flowers again, how she hadn’t seen the flowers since her parents had died. They’d left her there; the wilderness was no place for a child. But Wylaia had never stopped thinking about her, or the others they’d found along the way.</p>
<p>She wanted to come home to Winterhold and the college, to listen to all of the other mages prattle about their research. She wanted to step into the cool light of her quarters and see what had grown in the garden since the last time she was there. She wanted to walk to the edge of the building and look out over the wide, distant vista, trying to pick out shapes amongst the blanket of the perpetual blizzard.</p>
<p>Instead, she was stuck. Stuck in a place that made her veer from grateful and comfortable to unsteady and homesick in a few moments.</p>
<p>Wylaia pulled herself off the bed and began to properly clean her boots - of snow and dirt and anything else besides. By the time she had finished the steady, methodical work, she felt a little calmer. Her chest wasn’t quite as tight, and she could breathe a little more freely. But, of course, none of the problems had gone away. It never worked like that.</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>Two weeks later, whilst Wylaia was finally sewing the repairs on her spare robes - which had been torn since before she had come to Thedas - there was a knock at her door.</p>
<p>“Hello?”</p>
<p>“Miss Wylay! Miss Wylay!”</p>
<p>Frowning, Wylaia put the sewing aside and went to the door, opening it to find Varlhen. To her great relief, she saw that the young boy was dressed warmly in a knitted cap and thick coat, rather than the thin rags he’d had on when she’d met him in the farmhouse at his mother’s side.</p>
<p>“Afternoon, Varlhen. Does your mother need something?”</p>
<p>Varlhen nodded enthusiastically, and held out his hand. “Hafta show s’mthin’! C’mere!”</p>
<p>Grinning the infectious grin of one around a young child, Wylaia took his hand and stepped out, shutting the door behind her. She wouldn’t need her coat, most likely - it was a lot milder today, and unlike most of Haven’s residents, she was significantly more used to the cold. Varlhen was practically running over his own feet to lead her onwards, chattering in a mixture of common and the Theodosian Elven language that rendered itself utterly incomprehensible to Wylaia. It didn’t take long for her to realise they were going out of the gates and right, towards the farmhouse.</p>
<p>“Issa great thing!” Varlhen pronounced proudly, pointing at the building when it came into view. “Hassa roof!”</p>
<p>Kindly, Wylaia did not point out that it was actually <em>walls</em> that the building had gained as much as anything - in part because she was so struck by the sight of it. The building retained all of the warmth and inviting nature it had possessed the first night she’d seen it, with the sounds of laughter and the smell of cooking food spilling forth even onto the path. There were a dozen people milling around outside, working on the remaining touches. They had even been given some kind of sealant for the wood, she realised, and were painting it not only over the new patches, but the whole farmhouse. The mixture had an acrid, tar-like stench that she picked up on as they drew nearer, but it was easily overcome by whatever meat they were roasting inside.</p>
<p>“Wylaia!” called another voice as she approached - Isewyn. As soon as she appeared, Varlhen ran over to her and threw his arms around her leg. “’s good t’see you, love. Come, see what ye’ve done for’s.”</p>
<p>In a daze, Wylaia followed her in, looking through the almost unrecogniseable house. There were walls in the ground floor again, walls that separated the common area from the kitchen. Passing through them, Isewyn led her to a door that had not been there before - into a room that was newly added onto the back, adding even more space, with walls that were made not just of wood but stone, making them even sturdier. Upstairs, the tattered remains of the walls had been removed, replaced by new wood that separated the long stretch of the upstairs into rooms of three or four beds. Privacy; they had privacy again. There were even other pieces of furniture too, places to store the clothes that had been procured for them.</p>
<p>As Varlhen showed her his own bed, which he was quick and proud to say was a full adult sized one, Wylaia sank down onto the edge of what must be Isewyn’s own bed and held her hands to her mouth. Quietly, with a small smile turning her lips, Isewyn leant down and kissed her on the forehead, saying nothing.</p>
<p>And all Wylaia could think to herself was: why had she never done this for her kind in Skyrim?</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you so much for reading - &amp; if you've been reading as each chapter is released, thank you so much for waiting for me to produce it &lt;3</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. The Dragonborn Comes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Wylaia continues to help the elves in Haven. Then, out of the blue, she is summoned by Ellana to join her in the Hinterlands - with a letter that will change everything, and a battle that will make it even worse.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The best laid plans of mice and men result in looking at your schedule and thinking - you know, I can get back on track with this writing thing! - and then a million things happening to mess that up.</p>
<p>Hello! I am still alive, and still thinking about this story every day, and still writing. It might just be a bit slower than before, and a bit less scheduled. But nevermind that - you want to know what's really going on with this story. So...</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Wylaia was putting the final touches on the coat’s new lining when Ashinne appeared, a steaming mug of mulled wine in her hand. With slow, careful movements - and then a resigned thud - Ashinne lowered herself onto the cushion beside Wylaia and reached over with her empty hand.</p>
<p>“You take this, girl,” Ashinne said, holding out the mug with the other. “I’ll cast that off for yeh.”</p>
<p>Wylaia smiled, wrapping her hands around the cup and feeling its heat immediately soothing the aches in her fingertips. The sun was setting, now; she’d been here since she’d finished with Harritt. It had taken them almost two weeks, but they’d almost gotten all of the elves’ clothes lined against Haven’s chill. Josephine had made more than good on her promises, with deliveries of enough fur to do so, and more on its way for the future.</p>
<p>“This isn’t bad, yeh know. Could’ve been as good a servant as any of us.”</p>
<p>“I was, for a little while,” Wylaia replied. “Of a sort, anyway. When I was travelling I lived with a noblewoman for a time. I was really there to treat her son’s cough, but...”</p>
<p>Ashinne snorted. “She figured she’d get whatever work out of yeh she could, whilst y’were there.”</p>
<p>“I didn’t really think much of it at the time. She was nice.”</p>
<p>“Plenty of them are nice, girl. Doesn’t mean they aren’t still shem.”</p>
<p>The noblewoman had been an Altmer, in fact - but Wylaia didn’t think it would be helpful to mention that. She’d learned a good deal about needlework, at least - and some of the things the other servants had taught her about cleaning had meant she’d kept her alchemy supplies in even better condition. She’d barely had a single contamination from an old mortar since.</p>
<p>Instead, she sipped her wine. It was spiced with anise and something else Wylaia didn’t recognise, which left her tongue ever so slightly numb. Or, of course, that could’ve been the heat of it. Gethon had been mulling it over the fireplace every night this week, since they’d had the wine delivered. It comforted Wylaia to see the leader of the farmhouse serving the rest of them. She’d never liked the sort who’d sat on a throne whilst others worked. It seemed a waste of good hands.</p>
<p>“What’ll yeh take to, now this is seen and done?” Ashinne asked, snapping Wylaia out of her thoughts.</p>
<p>“Hm? Oh, there’s plenty to do. Did you know the smithy is running out of metals already? It’s all the recruiting the Commander’s been doing - I’m not sure the man’s ever been stuck without resources before, but...anyway, I thought finding some quarries might not be a bad idea. There’s bound to be plenty nearby, in this terrain. And to be honest, if I don’t get out of the town soon -”</p>
<p>Ashinne chuckled. “Aye, girl, yeh’ve the wanderlust and no mistake. Reckon it’ll do you good, that.”</p>
<p>Smiling, Wylaia nodded. “I think it will.”</p>
<p>“Now be off with yeh - they give yeh better food in the Chantry and yeh know it. Go. Don’t be stuck here in the dirt with us if you don’t have teh.”</p>
<p>For a moment Wylaia considered protesting - she liked dinner in the farmhouse much more than she liked the strange, fancy food Josephine had served daily to the inner circle. But she did also like being closer to her bed, when it was time to collapse into it...and maybe it would be a good idea to talk to the Commander about her plans to help Harritt out.</p>
<p>When she made it outside the sky was a beautiful shade of burnt orange, with only the wispiest blue at the firmament. The dusk light turned the snow around her a mixture of pale pinks and purples, and she walked slower than she might have otherwise done, taking in the sight of the land around her. Everyone else complained about Haven’s cold, but to Wylaia it was almost balmy in comparison to the worst parts of Skyrim. More than a few times she and Lydia had been caught without firewood in a snowstorm, alive only because of some carefully applied destruction magic.</p>
<p>By the time she made it to the map room, the board had already been placed over the table to turn it into one more suitable for dining. Josephine and Leliana were seated at one corner, whilst the Commander had taken his usual place - as far from them as he could get. Though Wylaia had not joined them for every meal, she’d never yet seen him sit for an entire one, though he ate just as much as the rest of them.</p>
<p>“Ah!” Josephine called with a smile in her voice. “Archmage, how wonderful to have you join us.”</p>
<p>It was the same thing that she said every time Wylaia walked into the room, but somehow it never got any less heartfelt. Looking nervously at her boots - which she had, in fact, managed to kick all of the snow off - Wylaia stepped into the room and took her usual seat. Which, unlike the Commander, was a diplomatic middle of the table. It just happened to also be the closest seat to the door. A fact that she suspected he’d noticed. He seemed to notice many things about her, his golden eyes sharpening, as if he’d been trained to watch.</p>
<p>“Good evening,” Wylaia said, brushing the loose strands of hair from her braid behind her ears. “How’s everyone?”</p>
<p>“I am well, thank you,” Leliana replied, lifting the goblet in her hands closer to her lips. She seemed different in this room; but then, she seemed different in every room.</p>
<p>Josephine nodded in agreement. “I am well also, though I must confess to having something of a cramp in my writing hand.”</p>
<p>There was an awkward pause wherein all three of the women looked expectantly at the Commander, who glowered over his tankard. Eventually, with a sigh, he said, “I am fine. Archmage.”</p>
<p>The tone of his voice was not at all unpleasant until he got to her title, which he said with the same disdain that he had every time since Josephine had first introduced her by it. They’d had a decidedly tense conversation that day, with Wylaia having to explain that it was the title for the head of her mages’ college, in the land that she came from. The Commander’s one, dry comment had been, <em>“Not ‘Magister’, then?”</em></p>
<p>She didn’t understand it, but she did understand the pointed looks, the way he clearly considered her less than a person, the suspicion and the distrust. If Lydia had been here, she would have said something along the lines of <em>I would be grateful if a man that handsome spent his time staring at me</em>, and the two of them would have snorted their mead from laughing. Wylaia had no interest in men, and Lydia had no interest in women, and there was no end to their ability to mock one another for it.</p>
<p>Thankfully, the conversation had moved on from the awkward pause by the time Wylaia could no longer contain her chuckling, and she found herself instead appearing unexpectedly attentive to one of Josephine’s anecdotes about the day’s work.</p>
<p>The food was as unpleasantly rich as Wylaia had expected. They put too much butter in Orlesian food, she had decided. Still, if you picked the meat out and ignored the over-seasoned broth, it was edible. And she did have to admit that the pastries that followed were better than even the freshest sweetroll.</p>
<p>By the time she made it back to her hut she was heavy with food, pleasantly sleepy, and looking forward to getting up at dawn for once - rather than before it.</p>
<p>Sadly, it didn’t work out that way.</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>
  <em>Wylaia,</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I am so sorry to ask this for you, and most of all to ask it so plainly - but we need your help. The people here are in terrible danger, and even Cassandra is convinced we cannot handle it on her own. I have told her only that I am sending for expert reinforcements, nothing more. I think that Solas has some more idea of what I am doing, and perhaps Varric too, but</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>There is a dragon here, Wylaia.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>We’ve been setting up outposts for the Inquisition to work from as we’ve travelled. I’d thought to get up through the hills to a high point, where we could look at Redcliffe and see what the mages gathered there are doing. We found a good, defensible spot in a narrow valley concealed by the surrounding stone. The land comes to a point there, and there is a small passage out of the camp into the wider valley beyond, on the way to Redcliffe.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>This morning, we took a look out there, and that was when we saw it. Not just one - several. It looks like a nest, Cassandra says. I am so sorry. I know what I am asking of you. I know what I have done just by sending this letter. But I need your help. There are so many innocent people in Redcliffe, even if you discount the mages - which, I would add, I most certainly do not.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Leliana, I know you are reading this. Do everything you have to in order to get Wylaia to us as fast as possible. Do not send soldiers. Do not send more of your people. Just send her, as fast as you can.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I am so sorry, my friend.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Ellana</em>
</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>Wylaia had known something was wrong the moment Leliana handed the letter to her personally, before even the slightest light of dawn had begun to shed over the horizon. In her hand, the letter shook, betraying the tremble in her fingers that she had barely noticed. She had known that they had dragons here. Miraak had all but shouted it in delight. And if Ellana had found one...he couldn’t be far behind.</p>
<p>A firm hand wrapped around her arm, jolting her out of her thoughts.</p>
<p>“Leliana, I-”</p>
<p>“I do not need to know.” A pause; Leliana smiled thinly. “Right now, at least. If the Herald needs you, then she needs you. You will take my horse. He is the fastest of those that Harritt sent to us, and I have never liked riding. This is a map of the route to the Hinterlands. On horseback, it will take you four days. Make your way to the Crossroads. I have people there who will show you the way to the Dusklight camp. Get your things ready - I will gather rations and supplies for you.”</p>
<p>She was gone before Wylaia could say a word, which was just as well; Wylaia had no idea what she would say anyway.</p>
<p>The next hours passed in a blur. When she got to the stables, Leliana’s horse - which for some unknown reason was actually <em>named</em> ‘Horse’ - had been loaded up with several saddlebags, plus a small tent. The Nightingale was there beside it, one hand patting the horse’s flank, the other holding out a full quiver of arrows. </p>
<p>Hours later, when she stopped to let Horse drink, Wylaia found the arrows to be tipped with an incredibly sharp stone she did not recognise. Their fletching was in a deep, rich red, and the quiver itself was framed with beautiful silver scrollwork. She thought the design looked like the small scabbards Leliana often had at her hips - she had, Wylaia realised, given her her own quiver.</p>
<p>The route to the Hinterlands was not difficult, and by the second day Wylaia was so delighted to be seeing snow melt and give way to green forest that she almost forgot the dire nature of her journey. When Horse needed rest from being ridden, she walked alongside him and took cuttings from a dozen plants that she had not seen in person. Most she recognised from Adan’s lessons - one was even a Royal Elfroot. When she rested on the third day, Wylaia carefully brewed it into a regeneration potion by the Theodosian recipe.</p>
<p>On the fourth day, she made it to the Crossroads.</p>
<p>It was a bustling place, with a strong sense of determination about it. It appeared war torn, but recovering, and in the growing smiles on peoples’ faces Wylaia could see Ellana’s magic. She was barely into the place before a dwarf in tanned leathers ran up to her.</p>
<p>“It’s Wylaia, right? I’m Harding - Leliana sent word ahead. Come with me.”</p>
<p>Gesturing her to follow, Harding led Wylaia through to a place that took care of Horse, as well as her heavier packs. Her weapons and her potions she kept on her, as well as a few rations - the rest she was happy to have off her shoulders for a time.</p>
<p>“The Camp’s not far off from here,” Harding explained, as she walked into a hut that was missing half a wall and more of its thatching. When the door was closed behind them, she smiled apologetically. “Sorry for rushing you off like that. Don’t want people to overhear why you’re here.”</p>
<p>Wylaia nodded. “No one here has seen it?”</p>
<p>“No, thank Andraste.” Harding shook her head. “The Camp the Herald’s in, it’s set in some pretty high cliffs. If you ask me, I reckon the dragon’s as wary of us as we are of it.”</p>
<p>“What can you tell me about it?”</p>
<p>“It’s a Ferelden Frostback, according to Lady Pentaghast. A mother. She’s a full clutch around her, which is what has everyone worried. They’re in a spot called Lady Shayna’s Valley.”</p>
<p>Wylaia wrinkled her nose up. “It’s mountainous there?”</p>
<p>“Not sure I’d call it fully mountainous, but aye, there’s plenty of hills and cliffs around.”</p>
<p>“Any sign of anyone else in the area?”</p>
<p>Harding raised an eyebrow, but shook her head again. “No, not that I know of. We’ve not been able to get far in to set a watch, though, so I can’t tell you for sure.”</p>
<p>Rubbing her face, Wylaia took a deep breath. “Alright. I’ll need to rest before we can deal with it, but get me to Ellana first.”</p>
<p>“Right you are. Come with me - we’ll be going on foot. It’s only an hour or so.”</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>Harding wound them through a path that eschewed the main roads entirely. It wasn’t really a path at all, which Wylaia took to be a compliment on the dwarf’s pathfinding skills. She moved incredibly quietly, and had a bow ready in her left hand at all times, the right poised to snatch from the quiver at her hip.</p>
<p>Even being cautious, they were there in under an hour, the two of them coming out of the undergrowth and descending along a dirt track, down towards the camp in question. It was significantly smaller than the Crossroads, with only a handful of tents and field stations set up. Clustered around a table towards the back, where the camp butted up against the rocky cliffs, was a familiar cluster of silhouettes.</p>
<p>“Ghilan’nain be praised,” Ellana cried softly, leaping over to Wylaia and throwing her arms around her in a tight hug. “You must have ridden like the wind.”</p>
<p>Wylaia nodded. “I had Leliana’s horse. Tell me what’s happened since you wrote.”</p>
<p>“Not a sodding thing,” said Varric, holding out his hand to Wylaia. She shook it as he added, “and damn lucky too. I’ve fought enough dragons to know I never want to do it again.”</p>
<p>“I didn’t realise you had experience with them,” Wylaia said, tilting her head. “Ellana didn’t mention it.”</p>
<p>“Varric considers it only necessary to reveal his useful aspects as and when he deems it fit,” interjected Cassandra, shooting him a glare. “It is good to see you. Where are the reinforcements?”</p>
<p>On her right, Wylaia heard Ellana cough slightly.</p>
<p>“Ah,” Wylaia said, sighing. “Look, I’ve been riding flat out for a few days. Is there somewhere we can sit down? Away from everyone else, I don’t want to get in the way.”</p>
<p>“Come,” Solas said, his eyes gleaming with understanding. “Our tent is the closest to the passage through to the valley beyond.”</p>
<p>“We have to keep Cassandra’s snoring away from the rest of them,” Varric added helpfully, earning himself another glare.</p>
<p>They did not sit within the tent, but just the other side of it. Past it, Wylaia could see where the rocky walls around them narrowed to a passage onwards. Spotting her suspicious glance, Ellana nodded once, then curled her legs up underneath her as she sat. Wylaia took a seat across from her, flanked by Cassandra and Varric.</p>
<p>Here went nothing.</p>
<p>“Well?” Cassandra asked, looking at her expectantly.</p>
<p>Wylaia took a deep breath. “I’m the reinforcements, Cassandra.”</p>
<p>“I beg your pardon?”</p>
<p>“You said there was a nest,” Wylaia said, ignoring Cassandra and turning her attention to Wylaia. “How many?”</p>
<p>Ellana sighed. “Just the one adult, but we’ve seen maybe a dozen of the small ones.”</p>
<p>“Now now, Frosty, let’s not underplay this,” Varric added, with a grimace. “When she says small, she means ‘bigger than any of us but by comparison to their mother, pretty small’.”</p>
<p>“Your dragons can reproduce?” asked Wylaia.</p>
<p>“Of course they can reproduce,” Cassandra scoffed. “Why would they not?”</p>
<p>“Where I come from,” Wylaia explained, “they’re extinct. Or, they were. Does this one have a lair?”</p>
<p>“It spends a lot of time around the mountain in the centre of the valley,” Varric said.</p>
<p>Wylaia nodded. “The scout, Harding, said it was...a Frostback? What does it breathe.”</p>
<p>“She is a Ferelden Frostback,” Solas said, glancing from Ellana to Wylaia. “She breathes fire. If you mean to ask what she is vulnerable to, it is frost magic.”</p>
<p>“I meant to ask what she was less resistant to,” Wylaia replied, raising her brows, “but that’s even better news. In that case, it shouldn’t be too hard to take care of, especially not with this many.”</p>
<p>The four of them stared at her for a long moment, bearing a mixture of expressions. Solas seemed somewhere between nonplussed and impressed; Cassandra was aghast and sceptical; Varric was grinning widely; and Ellana...Ellana just looked sad.</p>
<p>“Alright,” Wylaia said, ignoring them. “Here’s how this is going to work.”</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>Arrow notched, Wylaia crouched in the long grass and watched as the dragon swirled ahead. It was a beautiful mixture of gold and green,  as if someone had taken an elder dragon and lightened it until it glowed. From this far away, the creature had not yet noticed them - which was good. Because Wylaia had very quickly realised that dragons in Thedas were nothing like dragons in Skyrim.</p>
<p>For a start, she could see its children - dragonlings, Varric had said they were called - clambering around at the base of the distant rock and casually setting fire to the bushes around them. That was strange enough. But what made it even worse was the dragon itself. It was the size that Wylaia was used to seeing, but it looked so...alive. She couldn’t think of a better word for it. She could <em>feel</em> it - which did at least answer whether it had a soul in the way she was used to, but also raised the question of <em>why</em> she could feel it. This hadn’t happened in years - not since the dragon that had ‘saved’ her at Helgen.</p>
<p>It made what she was about to do really, really stupid.</p>
<p>Creeping forward, Wylaia glanced left and right to check that the others were hidden where she’d told them. Separated far from each other, with the mages and Varric spread around in a wide arc, whilst Cassandra waited back a little, ready to charge as needed. Each of them gave her a nod, and she continued to descend into the valley.</p>
<p>Wylaia had barely made it a few feet into the valley proper before the dragon noticed her. </p>
<p>Spreading her wings wide, the dragon swept towards her, rearing its head back. It was now or...well, shortly after being incinerated. Wylaia stood up, drew her bow back, and let the dragon tongue shake in her throat.</p>
<p>“GREETINGS, WISE MOTHER.”</p>
<p>The dragon reared back, sweeping her wings once, then twice, her head cocked to the side. She had majestic horns that curled back and away from her head, and the afternoon light glinted off them as they turned. Wylaia could feel her heart pounding in her chest, could see the dragonlings moving in the background.</p>
<p>“I AM DOVAHKIIN. I COME TO MEET WITH THE DRAGONKIND OF THIS PLACE. YOU ARE IN GRAVE DANGER.”</p>
<p>As she spoke, Wylaia could just about hear the others moving further into position. She didn’t dare look at them, lest she give away their positions, which was just as well - because she didn’t want to know what their faces looked like right now. The dragon tongue was not exactly subtle; she could feel the ground shaking beneath her.</p>
<p>The dragon was just a few dozen feet above her now, staring at her with beady black eyes, intense and intelligent. Wylaia waited, bow still partially drawn and pointed just before her, feeling the heat of the dragon’s breath against her face. It was temperate here in the Hinterlands, impressively so given how close they were to the snowy mountains that Haven lay within. But beneath the dragon’s breath, it felt like the southernmost reaches of Cyrodiil, overlooking Topal Bay.</p>
<p>Around Wylaia, the grass ruffled as the dragon sniffed once - twice - then tensed from nose to tail. Wylaia didn’t need a second warning - she pulled back and Shouted: “Fus ro dah!”</p>
<p>It barely ruffled the dragon at all, but it gave her just enough time to dive to the side and run. She’d intended to run away from an attempt to stomp on her, but it turned into something more - the dragon was not trying to land on her. Instead, she was rearing back and breathing huge swathes of flame all over the ground. Wylaia ran, and ran, until she had no breath left but her Voice and found herself Whirlwind Sprinting to get away from another torrent of flame.</p>
<p>Distantly, she became aware of the others keeping pace. They were having to avoid the flame too, but not so badly, so they had managed to keep up whilst she was weaving to and fro. Ahead Wylaia could see a cluster of dragonlings, now charging towards her. She drew her bow back again and fired, managing nothing more than a glancing hit on one’s side - but soon she saw bolt after bolt slamming into the creatures’ sides, as well as tumbling swathes of frost from Solas and Ellana.</p>
<p>When Wylaia came close to the dragonlings, she slung her bow over herself and drew her sword. Sunlight spilled around her, doing little in the already bright surroundings, but making her sword hand ring with the promise of magic. In the other hand she clenched her fingers and began summoning a frost atronach, hurling it just ahead of her to draw the dragonlings’ attention.</p>
<p>It had a short life, being weak to fire and stood before a dozen creatures that could breathe it - but it was wielding the creatures’ weakness, too. Two of them were dead by the time Wylaia closed in on them, and she drew another breath for a second Whirlwind Sprint, coming out the other side of the group as she rushed through the gap the atronach had made in its first and last moments within Thedas.</p>
<p>When she landed, Wylaia turned and swung her sword in an upward cut, slicing the closest dragonling in the side and not staying long enough to find out whether it had been a fatal blow. She kept running, charging on into the space beyond the valley, head lifted as she watched the mother dragon fly over in front of her. Her legs were stretching down - she was about to land.</p>
<p>“Now, Cassandra!” Wylaia yelled, diving in a roll to the side so that there was a clear path for the warrior to go through.</p>
<p>After that, it became the sort of chaotic fight that Wylaia hated to thrive in. She was a person who naturally liked to do things slowly, thoughtfully, carefully. In a fight with a dragon, you were only instinct. She downed a magicka potion to replenish her reserves and then another elixir to increase them. It was enough to let her summon another atronach, adding to the already plentiful supply of frost magic they had between her, Ellana and Solas. All the time she was diving out of the way of the dragon’s lashing tail, keeping an eye on Cassandra, and rolling to avoid the worst of the fire as it swept through the undergrowth.</p>
<p>She saw the shadow in the distance just after the dragon had plucked Cassandra into her jaws and begun to shake her around.</p>
<p>Miraak.</p>
<p>Stood upon a distant rock, sunlight gleaming from his mask, the First Dragonborn observed the battle without movement. His weapon, which was like no sword Wylaia had ever seen, was rested point down upon the stone beneath him, his hands folded over the pommel. He wasn’t going to help them - he wasn’t going to hinder them, either. He was going to wait for her to kill the dragon, just like he’d done in Solstheim, after she’d run away from the Black Books. And then he was going to take its soul.</p>
<p>“Ellana!” Wylaia screamed, holding out the arrow she had just drawn and pointing in his direction. Ellana, who had previously been rushing forth to help Cassandra, snapped her head to the side, her mouth dropping open. “Keep her busy. Do not kill her, do you understand me?”</p>
<p>She did not even wait to see Ellana’s nod before she ran. Miraak was the other side of the dragon, just off to the side, so Wylaia had three choices - run behind it, and risk the lash of the tail, or run before it, and risk being caught in her breath. The Dragonborn chose the third option: charging directly at her midsection, sliding underneath her, and praying to every God she’d ever known that the dragon would not trample her in the process.</p>
<p>Miraak still did not move. He did not move when Wylaia regained her feet and charged towards him. He did not move when her feet crested the rock before him, arrow discarded and Dawnbreaker in her hands - and that should have been the clue that something was wrong. She could not see his expression, but she imagined that he was smiling as he reared back and Shouted at her.</p>
<p>Wylaia had never been on the receiving end of an Unrelenting Force shout, and she found - as she landed crumpled on the stone some twenty feet away - that she never wanted to again. Her side was burning with agony, and she suspected some of her ribs were broken. Pulling herself to her feet with a groan, she forced Restoration magic into her body and dropped Dawnbreaker, drawing her bow.</p>
<p>“Still you are foolish, Dragonborn. I am the master of my own fate, and my fate is greater than even my master imagined for me. Until you gifted us with this opportunity, of course.”</p>
<p>He continued talking, unswayed as Wylaia unloaded one, two, three arrows into him. They stuck, but after a moment he just waved a hand that glowed the same pale white as hers had done a moment ago.</p>
<p>“What do you want from this, Miraak? What do you think you can gain from this world?”</p>
<p>With slow, heavy steps, Miraak came to the crest of the rock he was stood upon, leaning forward towards her. “Freedom,” he hissed at her, before rearing back to Shout again.</p>
<p>Wylaia did not wait. She threw herself to the side in a roll, and began to fire upon him again. She had never fought him before, only stood beneath his arrogant taunts - but now she could see his arrogance was not misplaced. He could Shout three times as fast as she could, and the one time he managed to catch her with his sword she felt all of the energy being leeched from her body. In the distance, she could hear the others yelling, struggling in their own battle. They couldn’t hold on. It would take her an eternity to kill him, if she managed to at all.</p>
<p>Growling, Wylaia dove away from Miraak’s fire breath and charged back towards the dragon. He wanted its soul? He could have it. For all she knew, it would devour him back. The dragons of this world were not the same, and there was no way to be sure.</p>
<p>By the time she made it back to the dragon’s side, Cassandra was back in the fight, but not far behind them Wylaia could see Ellana collapsed against Solas’s side, blood staining her lips and chin. This, more than anything else, made Wylaia panic. She looked back over her shoulder at Miraak, who had returned to observing passively.</p>
<p>Turning back to the Dragon, Wylaia sighed. “I’m sorry,” she muttered, before planting her feet on the ground and Shouting: “Mul qah!”</p>
<p>Multicoloured light shone around Wylaia as the Dragon Aspect manifested, wreathing her in ethereal armour and - for a brief moment - lifting her from the ground. Over to the side, Wylaia saw Cassandra’s eyes widen, first as the armour appeared and than as Wylaia drew Dawnbreaker once more.</p>
<p>“WISE MOTHER,” Wylaia called in the dragon tongue. “FORGIVE ME.”</p>
<p>With the strength of a dragon thrumming through her body, Wylaia leapt into the battle. With each strike, the dragon roared in pain - not burned by Dawnbreaker’s fire in the slightest, but succumbing to the almighty strikes that Wylaia was now able to deal. When the dragon turned and began to focus on her, the others capitalised on the distraction, sending a rain of destruction down upon her.</p>
<p>The battle ended when Wylaia stepped back, took a deep breath and Shouted: “Fo krah diin!”</p>
<p>The frost swirled up from within her lungs, bitingly cold and yet doing no damage to her at all. It cascaded out of her mouth, spreading wide as if her jaw were that of a dragon’s, and flowing forth to encompass the creature entirely. Frost crystals coalesced on every inch of the dragon’s scales, sending her reeling, then stumbling, then collapsing to the ground.</p>
<p>As the creature exhaled its last breath, Wylaia heard a rumble that shook the earth and cracked the stone before her - the dragon’s final words.</p>
<p>“YOU BETRAY YOUR KIN, OUTSIDER.”</p>
<p>The others began to cheer as the dragon became still, but Wylaia took no notice of them. She turned instead to look over her shoulder at Miraak, who was stood with one hand raised. She did not need to look back at the dragon to know that its soul was collapsing, rushing out, rushing towards her - only to turn in the air, and make for Miraak’s form instead. She realised, as it began to illuminate him, that something looked different than the last time he’d done this, on the huge ice plain in Solstheim. There was something more solid about his form, something more...</p>
<p>She looked down at Dawnbreaker, which shone with two distinct colours of blood.</p>
<p>And smiled.</p>
<p>Miraak turned and vanished within an Oblivion Gate of some kind, and Wylaia did not stop him.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you all for reading, supporting, commenting &amp; kudosing &lt;3 It means a lot and keeps me going even when finding time/capacity to write is hard.</p>
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